Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

ChatGPT Containers can now run bash, pip/npm install packages and download files

simonwillison.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 336 posts

Re: ChatGPT Containers can now run bash, pip/npm install packages and download files

#31

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

simonw wrote: post #14
behnamoh wrote: post #5

I wonder if the era of dynamic programming languages is over. Python/JS/Ruby/etc. were good tradeoffs when developer time mattered. But now that most code is written by LLMs, it's as "hard" for the LLM to write Python as it is to write Rust/Go (assuming enough training data on the language ofc; LLMs still can't write Gleam/Janet/CommonLisp/etc.). Esp. with Go's quick compile time, I can see myself using it more and m…

I have certainly become Go-curious thanks to coding agents - I have a medium sized side-project in progress using Go at the moment and it's been surprisingly smooth sailing considering I hardly know the language. The Go standard library is a particularly good fit for building network services and web proxies, which fits this project perfectly.

100% check out Golang even more! I have been writing Golang AI coding projects for a really long time because I really loved writing different languages and Golang was one in which I settled on.

Golang's libraries are phenomenal & the idea of porting over to multiple servers is pretty easy, its really portable.

I actually find Golang good for CLI projects, Web projects and just about everything.

Usually the only time I still use python uvx or vibe code using that is probably when I am either manipulating images or pdf's or building a really minimalist tkinkter UI in python/uv

Although I tried to convert the python to golang code which ended up using fyne for gui projects and surprisingly was super robust but I might still use python in some niche use cases.

Check out my other comment in here for finding a vibe coded project written in a single prompt when gemini 3 pro was launched in the web (I hope its not promotion because its open source/0 telemetry because I didn't ask for any of it to be added haha!)

Golang is love. Golang is life.

Re: ChatGPT Containers can now run bash, pip/npm install packages and download files

#32

Post by behnamoh »

simonw wrote: post #14
behnamoh wrote: post #5

I wonder if the era of dynamic programming languages is over. Python/JS/Ruby/etc. were good tradeoffs when developer time mattered. But now that most code is written by LLMs, it's as "hard" for the LLM to write Python as it is to write Rust/Go (assuming enough training data on the language ofc; LLMs still can't write Gleam/Janet/CommonLisp/etc.). Esp. with Go's quick compile time, I can see myself using it more and m…

I have certainly become Go-curious thanks to coding agents - I have a medium sized side-project in progress using Go at the moment and it's been surprisingly smooth sailing considering I hardly know the language. The Go standard library is a particularly good fit for building network services and web proxies, which fits this project perfectly.

> considering I hardly know the language.

Same boat! In fact I used to (still do) dislike Go's syntax and error handling (the same 4 lines repeated every time you call a function), but given that LLMs can write the code and do the cross-model review for me, I literally don't even see the Go source code, which is nice because I'd hate it if I did (my dislike of Go's syntax + all the AI slop in the code would drive me nuts).

But at the end of the day, Go has good scaffolding, the best tooling (maybe on par with Rust's, definitely better than Python even with uv), and tons of training data for LLMs. It's also a rather simple language, unlike Swift (which I wish was simpler because it's a really nice language otherwise).

Re: ChatGPT Containers can now run bash, pip/npm install packages and download files

#33

Post by logicprog »

simonw wrote: post #14
behnamoh wrote: post #5

I wonder if the era of dynamic programming languages is over. Python/JS/Ruby/etc. were good tradeoffs when developer time mattered. But now that most code is written by LLMs, it's as "hard" for the LLM to write Python as it is to write Rust/Go (assuming enough training data on the language ofc; LLMs still can't write Gleam/Janet/CommonLisp/etc.). Esp. with Go's quick compile time, I can see myself using it more and m…

I have certainly become Go-curious thanks to coding agents - I have a medium sized side-project in progress using Go at the moment and it's been surprisingly smooth sailing considering I hardly know the language. The Go standard library is a particularly good fit for building network services and web proxies, which fits this project perfectly.

It's funny seeing you say that, because I've had an entire arc of despising the design of, and peremptorily refusing to use, Go, to really enjoying it, thanks to AI coding agents being able to take care of the boilerplate for me.

It turns out that verbosity isn't really a problem when LLMs are the one writing the code based on more high level markdown specs (describing logic, architecture, algorithms, concurrency, etc), and Go's extreme simplicity, small range of language constructs, and explicitness (especially in error handling and control flow) make it much easier to quickly and accurately review agent code.

It also means that Go's incredible (IMO) runtime, toolchain, and standard library are no longer marred by the boilerplate either, and I can begin to really appreciate their brilliance. It has me really reconsidering a lot of what I believed about language design.

Re: ChatGPT Containers can now run bash, pip/npm install packages and download files

#34

Post by simonw »

xnx wrote: post #29

How much compute do you get in these containers? Could I have it run whisper on an mp3 it downloads?

That might work! You would have to figure out how to get Whisper working in there but I'm sure that's possible with a bit of creativity concerning uploading files and maybe running a build with the available C compiler.

It appears to have 4GB of RAM and 56 (!?) CPU cores https://chatgpt.com/share/6977e1f8-0f94-8006-9973-e9fab6d244...

Re: ChatGPT Containers can now run bash, pip/npm install packages and download files

#35

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

yibers wrote: post #11
rvz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plus, I get a binary that I can port to other systems w/o problem. So cross-platform vibe-coded malware is the future then?

I hope that AVs will also evolve using the new AI tech to detect this type of malware.

Honestly I looked at Go for malware and I mean AV detection for golang used to be ehh but recently It got strong.

Then it became a cat and mouse game with obfuscators and deobfucsators.

John Hammond has a *BRILLIANT* Video on this topic. 100% recommneded.

Honestly Speaking from John Hammond I feel like Nim as a language or V-lang is something which will probably get vibe coded malware from. Nim has been used for hacking so much that iirc windows actually blocked the nim compiler as malware itself!

Nim's biggest issue is that hackers don't know it but if LLM's fix it. Nim becomes a really lucrative language for hackers & John Hammond described that Nim's libraries for hacking are still very decent.

Re: ChatGPT Containers can now run bash, pip/npm install packages and download files

#36

Post by c7b »

behnamoh wrote: post #5

I wonder if the era of dynamic programming languages is over. Python/JS/Ruby/etc. were good tradeoffs when developer time mattered. But now that most code is written by LLMs, it's as "hard" for the LLM to write Python as it is to write Rust/Go (assuming enough training data on the language ofc; LLMs still can't write Gleam/Janet/CommonLisp/etc.). Esp. with Go's quick compile time, I can see myself using it more and m…

Agree on compiled languages, wondering about Go vs Rust. Go compiles faster but is more verbose, token cost is an important factor. Rust's famously strict compiler and general safety orientation seems like a strong candidate for LLM coding. Go would probably have more training data out already though.

Re: ChatGPT Containers can now run bash, pip/npm install packages and download files

#37

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

simonw wrote: post #34
xnx wrote: post #29

How much compute do you get in these containers? Could I have it run whisper on an mp3 it downloads?

That might work! You would have to figure out how to get Whisper working in there but I'm sure that's possible with a bit of creativity concerning uploading files and maybe running a build with the available C compiler. It appears to have 4GB of RAM and 56 (!?) CPU cores https://chatgpt.com/share/6977e1f8-0f94-8006-9973-e9fab6d244...

Huh...

If people are getting this for free or even as an offering with chatgpt consideirng it becomes subsidized too. Lowend providers are a little in threat with their 7$/year deals if Chatgpt provides 56 cores for free. this doesn't seem right to provide so many cores for (free??)

Are you running this in your free account as you mention in blog post simon or in your paid account?

Re: ChatGPT Containers can now run bash, pip/npm install packages and download files

#39

Post by simonw »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #37
simonw wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might work! You would have to figure out how to get Whisper working in there but I'm sure that's possible with a bit of creativity concerning uploading files and maybe running a build with the available C compiler. It appears to have 4GB of RAM and 56 (!?) CPU cores https://chatgpt.com/share/6977e1f8-0f94-8006-9973-e9fab6d244...

Huh... If people are getting this for free or even as an offering with chatgpt consideirng it becomes subsidized too. Lowend providers are a little in threat with their 7$/year deals if Chatgpt provides 56 cores for free. this doesn't seem right to provide so many cores for (free??) Are you running this in your free account as you mention in blog post simon or in your paid account?

My $20/month paid account.

I used a free account to check if the feature was available there and it tried to get me to upgrade two prompts in (just enough for me to confirm the container worked and could install packages).

Re: ChatGPT Containers can now run bash, pip/npm install packages and download files

#40

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #12
candiddevmike wrote: post #6

Seems like everyone is trying to get ahead of tool calling moving people "off platform" and creating differentiators around what tools are available "locally" to the models etc. This also takes the wind out of the sandboxing folks, as it probably won't be long before the "local" tool calling can effectively do anything you'd need to do on your local machine. I wonder when they'll start offering virtual, persistent de…

> I wonder when they'll start offering virtual, persistent dev environments... A lot of companies have been wanting to move in this direction. Instead of maintaining a fleet of machines, you just get a bunch of thin clients and pay Microsoft of whoever to host the actual workloads. They already do this 'kiosk' style stuff for a lot of front-line staff. Honestly, not having my own local hardware for development sounds…

We are gonna have YOLO agents who will deploy directly to website (technically exe.dev already does that for me when I ask it to generate golang projects lol)

Honestly I felt like it really bores me or (overwhelms?) me because now I feel like okay now I will do this, then that and then that & drastically expand the scope of the project but that comes with its own fatigue and the limits of free tokens or context with exe.dev so I end up publishing it on git provider, git ingest it paste it in web browser gemini ask it for updates (it has 1 million context) and then paste it with Opencode with an openrouter devstral key.

I used this workflow to drastically improve the UI of a project but like I would consider that aside from some tinkering, I felt like the "fun" of a project definitely got reduced.

It was always fun for me to use LLM's as I was in loop (Didn't use agents, copy paste workflow from web) but now agents kind of replicated that too & have gotten (I must admit) pretty good at it.

I don't know man, any thoughts on how to make such things fun again? When LLM's first came or even before using agents like this with just creating single scripts, It was fun to use them but creating whole projects with huge scope feels very fun sucking imo.

Post reply on HN