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

simonwillison.net

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

#241

Post by fendy3002 »

jmacd wrote: post #3

I wonder how long npm/pip etc even makes sense. Dependancies introduce unnecessary LOC and features which are, more and more, just written by LLMs themselves. It is easier to just write the necessary functionality directly. Whether that is more maintainable or not is a bit YMMV at this stage, but I would wager it is improving.

I consider packages over 100k download production-tested. Sure LLM can roll some by themselves but if many edge cases to appear, (which may already be handled by public packages) you will need to handle it.

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

#242

Post by hdjrudni »

sersi wrote: post #228
jmacd wrote: post #3

I wonder how long npm/pip etc even makes sense. Dependancies introduce unnecessary LOC and features which are, more and more, just written by LLMs themselves. It is easier to just write the necessary functionality directly. Whether that is more maintainable or not is a bit YMMV at this stage, but I would wager it is improving.

Well you do need to vet dependencies and I wish there was a way to exclude purely vibe coded dependencies that no human reviewed but for well established libraries, I do trust well maintained and designed human developed libraries over AI slop. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a luddite, I use claude code and cursor but the code generated by either of those is nowhere near what I'd call good maintainable code and I end up…

I've been copy-pasting small modules directly into my projects. That way I can look them over and see if they're OK and it saves me an install and possible future npm-jacking. There's a whole ton of small things that rarely need any maintenance, and if they do, they're small enough that I can fix myself. Worst case I paste in the new version (I press 'y' on github and paste the link at the top of the file so I can find it again)

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

#243

Post by hdjrudni »

kristianp wrote: post #61
jmacd wrote: post #3

I wonder how long npm/pip etc even makes sense. Dependancies introduce unnecessary LOC and features which are, more and more, just written by LLMs themselves. It is easier to just write the necessary functionality directly. Whether that is more maintainable or not is a bit YMMV at this stage, but I would wager it is improving.

At times I wonder why x tui coding agent was written in js/ts/python, why not use Go if it's mostly llm coded anyway? But that's mostly my frustration at having to wait for npm to install a thousand dependencies, instead of one executable plus some config files. There's also support libraries like terminal ui that differ in quality between platforms.

Funny because as a non-Go user, the few Go binaries I've used also installed a bunch of random stuff.

This can be fixed in npm if you publish pre-compiled binaries but that has its own problems.

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

#244

Post by physicsguy »

jmacd wrote: post #3

I wonder how long npm/pip etc even makes sense. Dependancies introduce unnecessary LOC and features which are, more and more, just written by LLMs themselves. It is easier to just write the necessary functionality directly. Whether that is more maintainable or not is a bit YMMV at this stage, but I would wager it is improving.

What a bizarre comment. Take something like NumPy - has a hard dependency on BLAS implementations where numerical correctness are highly valued for accuracy and require deep thinking for correct implementation as well as for performance. Written in a different language again for performance so again an LLM would have to implement all of those things. What’s the utility in burning energy to regenerate this all the time when implementations already exist?

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

#245

Post by jacquesm »

fooker wrote: post #230
jacquesm wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, so this is effectively 'guided closed loop' software development with the testset as the control. It gives me a bit of a 'turtles all the way down' feeling because if the test set can be 'good' why couldn't the code be good as well? I'm quite wary of all of this, as you've probably gathered by now: the idea that you can toss a bunch of 'pass' tests into a box and then generate code until all of the tests…

You are right. What you are missing is that the thing driving this untrusted pile of hacks keep getting better at a rapid pace. So much that the quality of the output is passable now, mimicking man-years of software engineering in a matter of hours. If you don’t believe me, pick a project that you have always wanted to build from scratch and let cursor/claude code have a go at it. You get to make the key decisions, b…

Thank you, I will try that and see where it leads. This all suggests a massive downward adjustment for any capitalized software is on the menu.

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

#246

Post by ben_w »

pharrington wrote: post #171
fooker wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most code, this never happens in the real world. The vast majority of code is garbage, and has been for several decades.

So we should all work to become better programmers! What I'm seeing now is too many people giving up and saying "most code is bad, so I may was well pump out even worse code MUCH faster." People are chasing convenience and getting a far worse quality of life in exchange.

I've seen all four quadrants of [good code, bad code] x [business success, business failure].

The real money we used to get paid was for business success, not directly for code quality; the quality metrics we told ourselves were closer to CV-driven development than anything the people with the money understood let alone cared about, which in turn was why the term "technical debt" was coined as a way to try to get the leadership to care about what we care about.

There's some domains where all that stuff we tell ourselves about quality, absolutely does matter… but then there's the 278th small restaurant that wants a website with a menu, opening hours, and table booking service without having e.g. 1500 American corporations showing up in the cookie consent message to provide analytics they don't need but are still automatically pre-packaged with the off-the-shelf solution.

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

#247

Post by PunchyHamster »

jmacd wrote: post #3

I wonder how long npm/pip etc even makes sense. Dependancies introduce unnecessary LOC and features which are, more and more, just written by LLMs themselves. It is easier to just write the necessary functionality directly. Whether that is more maintainable or not is a bit YMMV at this stage, but I would wager it is improving.

You have insane delusions about how capable LLMs are but even assuming its somehow true: downloading deps instead of hallucinating more code saves you on tokens

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

#249

Post by ludvigk »

zekejohn wrote: post #248
tgq2915 wrote: post #63

[flagged]

if its in a secured and completely isolated sandbox that gets destroyed at the end of the request, then how could it he “insecure”

That “completely isolated” sandbox is connected to the internet on one end, and to an insecure human on the other.
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