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My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now (GLM-4.5 Air)

simonwillison.net

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Re: My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now (GLM-4.5 Air)

#271

Post by devmor »

stavros wrote: post #215
devmor wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand. For code, why would I want to remix existing code snippets? That is what you're doing already. You're just relying on a vector compression and search engine to hide it from you and hoping the output is what you expect, instead of having it direct you to where it remixed those snippets from so you can see how they work to start with and make sure its properly implemented from the get-go. We all w…

I don't understand your point. You seem to be saying that we should be getting code from the source, then adapting it to our project ourselves, instead of getting adapted code to begin with. I'm going to review the code anyway, why would I not want to save myself some of the work? I can "see how they work" after the LLM gives them to me just fine.

The work that you are "saving" is the work of using your brain to determine the solution to the problem. Whatever the LLM gives you doesn't have a context it is used in other than your prompt - you don't even know what it does until after you evaluate it.

If you instead have a set of sources related to your problem, they immediately come with context, usage and in many cases, developer notes and even change history to show you mistakes and adaptations.

You're ultimately creating more work for yourself* by trying to avoid work, and possibly ending up with an inferior solution in the process. Where is your sense of efficiency? Where is your pride as a intellectual?

* Yes, you are most likely creating more work for yourself even if you think you are capable of telling otherwise. [1]

1. https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-o...

Re: My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now (GLM-4.5 Air)

#272

Post by w10-1 »

svachalek wrote: post #183
genewitch wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bite. How do i train/make and/or use LoRA, or, separately, how do i fine-tune? I've been asking this for months, and no one has a decent answer. websearch on my end is seo/geo-spam, with no real instructions. I know how to make an SD LoRA, and use it. I've known how to do that for 2 years. So what's the big secret about LLM LoRA?

For completeness, for Apple hardware MLX is the way to go.

MLX github: https://github.com/ml-explore/mlx

get started: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2025/315/

details: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2025/298/

Re: My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now (GLM-4.5 Air)

#273

Post by vaenaes »

Nesco wrote: post #256
NitpickLawyer wrote: post #6

> Two years ago when I first tried LLaMA I never dreamed that the same laptop I was using then would one day be able to run models with capabilities as strong as what I’m seeing from GLM 4.5 Air—and Mistral 3.2 Small, and Gemma 3, and Qwen 3, and a host of other high quality models that have emerged over the past six months. Yes, the open-models have surpassed my expectations in both quality and speed of release. For…

Zuck wouldn’t have leaked it on 4chan of all the places

Why not?

Re: My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now (GLM-4.5 Air)

#274

Post by devmor »

simonw wrote: post #110
devmor wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't have just typed "extract frame at timestamp as jpeg ffmpeg" into Google and used the StackExchange result that comes up first that gives you a command to do exactly that?

Before LLMs made ffmpeg no-longer-frustrating-to-use I genuinely didn't know that ffmpeg COULD do things like that.

I'm not really sure what you're saying an LLM did in this case. Inspired a lost sense of curiosity?

Re: My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now (GLM-4.5 Air)

#275

Post by nottorp »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #269
nottorp wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all do that, sometimes where it’s time critical sometimes where it isn’t. But I keep being told “AI” is the second coming of Ahura Mazda so it shouldn’t do stuff like that right?

"I'm taking this talking dog right back to the pound. It told me to short NVDA, and you should see the buffer overflow bugs in the C++ code it wrote. Totally overhyped. I don't get it."

"We hear you have been calling our deity a talking dog. Please enter the red door for reeducation."

Re: My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now (GLM-4.5 Air)

#276

Post by stavros »

devmor wrote: post #271
stavros wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your point. You seem to be saying that we should be getting code from the source, then adapting it to our project ourselves, instead of getting adapted code to begin with. I'm going to review the code anyway, why would I not want to save myself some of the work? I can "see how they work" after the LLM gives them to me just fine.

The work that you are "saving" is the work of using your brain to determine the solution to the problem. Whatever the LLM gives you doesn't have a context it is used in other than your prompt - you don't even know what it does until after you evaluate it. If you instead have a set of sources related to your problem, they immediately come with context, usage and in many cases, developer notes and even change history t…

Thanks for the concern, but I'm perfectly able to judge for myself whether I'm creating more work or delivering an inferior product.

Re: My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now (GLM-4.5 Air)

#277

Post by dang »

th0ma5 wrote: post #180
simonw wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I scanned the code and understood what it was doing, but I didn't spend much time on it once I'd seen that it worked. If I'm writing code for production systems using LLMs I still review every single line - my personal rule is I need to be able to explain how it works to someone else before I'm willing to commit it. I wrote a whole lot more about my approach to using LLMs to help write "real" code here: https://simon…

[flagged]

Please don't cross into personal attack in HN comments.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: twice is already a pattern - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44110785. No more of this, please.

Edit 2: I only just realized that you've been frequently posting abusive replies in a way that crosses into harangue if not harassment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44725284 (July 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44725227 (July 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44725190 (July 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44525830 (July 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44441154 (July 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44110817 (May 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44110785 (May 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44018000 (May 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44008533 (May 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43779758 (April 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43474204 (March 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43465383 (March 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42960299 (Feb 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42942818 (Feb 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42706415 (Jan 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42562036 (Dec 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42483664 (Dec 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42021665 (Nov 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41992383 (Oct 2024)

That's abusive, unacceptable, and not even a complete list!

You can't go after another user like this on HN, regardless of how right you are or feel you are or who you have a problem with. If you keep doing this, we're going to end up banning you, so please stop now.

Re: My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now (GLM-4.5 Air)

#278

Post by dang »

th0ma5 wrote: post #182
simonw wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know these models can build games and apps they've never seen before because I've already observed them doing exactly that time and time again. If you haven't seen that yourself yet I suggest firing up the free, no registration required GLM-4.5 Air on https://chat.z.ai/ and seeing if you can prove yourself wrong.

[flagged]

Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44726957 and please stop posting these.

Re: My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now (GLM-4.5 Air)

#279

Post by badsectoracula »

joelthelion wrote: post #70

Apart from using a Mac, what can you use for inference with reasonable performance? Is a Mac the only realistic option at the moment?

An Nvidia GPU is the most common answer, but personally i've done all my LLM use locally using mainly Mistral Small 3.1/3.2-based models and llama.cpp with an AMD RX 7900 XTX GPU. It only gives you ~4.71 tokens per second, but that is fast enough for a lot of uses. For example last month or so i wrote a raytracer[0][1] in C with Devstral Small 1.0 (based on Mistral Small 3.1). It wasn't "vibe coding" as much as a "co-op" where i'd go back and forth a chat interface (koboldcpp) and i'd, e.g. ask the LLM to implement some feature, then i'd switch to the editor and start writing code using that feature while the LLM was generating it in the background. Or, more often, i'd fix bugs in the LLM's code :-P.

FWIW GPU aside, my PC isn't particularly new - it is a 5-6 year old PC that was the cheapest money could buy originally and became "decent" at the time i upgraded it ~5 years ago and i only added the GPU around Christmas as prices were dropping since AMD was about to release the new GPUs.

[0] https://i.imgur.com/FevOm0o.png

[1] https://app.filen.io/#/d/e05ae468-6741-453c-a18d-e83dcc3de92...

Re: My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now (GLM-4.5 Air)

#280

Post by simonw »

There's a new model from Qwen today - Qwen3-30B-A3B-Instruct-2507 - that also runs comfortably on my Mac (using about 30GB of RAM with an 8bit quantization).

I tried the "Write an HTML and JavaScript page implementing space invaders" prompt against it and didn't quite get a working game with a single shot, but it was still an interesting result: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jul/29/qwen3-30b-a3b-instruct...

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