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A desktop made for one

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Re: A desktop made for one

#91

Post by morganf »

eichin wrote: post #86
nz wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how to tell you this, but people have been writing custom software for personal use for decades. I've been doing it since at least 2009! I find it hard to believe that there is a demographic of people that were yearning to write code, but simply could not because they lacked LLMs. Is it the price? Are people simply too cheap to buy books? Or have they simply "forgotten" how to patiently and thoughtfully…

Given how often younger people find my typing speed startling, I think it has been somewhat forgotten (US high schools had "keyboarding" classes at one point but that seems to have fallen off...)

Seriously agree. I am wildly overeducated and I often think the most useful class I ever took in high school was my senior year elective for a typing class. On old IBM typewriters. And the only class I took in high school with non-honors kids. Typing insanely fast, especially for someone who is a fast thinker, is a bit of a magic power in itself.

Re: A desktop made for one

#92

Post by blks »

This is nice, but is also leagues away from something you’re written yourself. Take LLMs out of equation, and you have piles of code that you barely recognise and barely can edit or tweak by yourself.

Re: A desktop made for one

#94

Post by blks »

vessenes wrote: post #45
redfloatplane wrote: post #22

I (and I'm sure many others) have been thinking about this a lot over the last couple of months. I called it "Extremely Personal Software" in a blog post a few months ago ( https://redfloatplane.lol/blog/14-releasing-software-now/ ) but there are lots of names and concepts floating about for the same basic idea. I think it's possible the amount of new software that will be written for an audience of 1-10 will be grea…

I had the same reaction. We're headed into a period where you can shape your tools exactly as you like them; artisanal rather than factory-created workshops, essentially. I think the instinct that APIs, validation layers, and so on take on a much higher importance is right.. I have a few internal tools that made sense to make libraries out of, and once the first library is good, and a test suite is comprehensive, por…

> We're headed into a period where you can shape your tools exactly as you like the

What period were we for the past 50 years?

Re: A desktop made for one

#95

Post by notesinthefield »

blks wrote: post #92

This is nice, but is also leagues away from something you’re written yourself. Take LLMs out of equation, and you have piles of code that you barely recognise and barely can edit or tweak by yourself.

I dont think it matters at all to OP. Sidestepping the insult, it sounds like they very, very much want to tools that support their needs only, methodology be damned.

Re: A desktop made for one

#96

Post by vessenes »

chrisweekly wrote: post #68
vessenes wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same reaction. We're headed into a period where you can shape your tools exactly as you like them; artisanal rather than factory-created workshops, essentially. I think the instinct that APIs, validation layers, and so on take on a much higher importance is right.. I have a few internal tools that made sense to make libraries out of, and once the first library is good, and a test suite is comprehensive, por…

"Everting"?

I learned it in the math context - a sphere eversion is a 3 dimensional process that ends with the inside of the sphere becoming the outside.

Re: A desktop made for one

#97

Post by CableNinja »

salvesefu wrote: post #5
robotresearcher wrote: post #4

I’m inspired by the message. On this software itself: I’d like to know how this feels to use. It’s so very lightweight. Does it feel categorically different to what we are used to? One of the things I miss about the 1980s home computers is that they booted into a usable command line in a handful of seconds, from a few KB in ROM. Imagine what today’s HW could do if we’d retained that level of efficiency.

we are there now. depending on boot loader/os combination, one can get to the sub 1-5 sec range, if its cli-only.

Clearly havent seen what enterprise hardware is like these days... sure, the OS takes 5 seconds.. but the hardware can take 10 minutes in some cases now glares at hpe gen11 systems. Its seriously bad now. The amount of power and time backround hardware level tasks now take has significantly increased over the last 10 years. Even the ancient dell r710 i have sititng in a closet collecting dust boots faster than todays hp gen11's.

We waste a ton of energy on ineffeciencies in hardware and software today all because we managed to "just go faster".

Re: A desktop made for one

#98

Post by gnabgib »

deepfriedbits wrote: post #90
cadamsdotcom wrote: post #88

This is really exciting. Some of the folks who make things will go on to make things that suit not just their preferences but also those of a small audience. Some of those audiences will go on to grow and grow and disrupt the big players. The capital intensive part of software construction is melting away and being converted to opex (payg token costs and your time) and that will blast open the possibility space and l…

Absolutely and you're dead on thinking about the opening of the possibility space. The value of software as an enterprise will fall as we enter an age of abundant, and often custom, bespoke software. There will be many great apps coming and some lousy apps. Another thing to watch for is how chatty the internet is about to become. A great many of these apps will hit APIs, ping each other, and so forth.

Real nice to see two accounts using LLMs discuss nothing like this. They warned us this would happen, and here we are. I guess the topic is apt, but we used to customize windows (95+) and Linux like this (not down to vibe-coded insecure replacement of apps, but display/desktop/widgets/explorer/transparency of components).

Re: A desktop made for one

#99

Post by [deleted] »

redfloatplane wrote: post #22

I (and I'm sure many others) have been thinking about this a lot over the last couple of months. I called it "Extremely Personal Software" in a blog post a few months ago ( https://redfloatplane.lol/blog/14-releasing-software-now/ ) but there are lots of names and concepts floating about for the same basic idea. I think it's possible the amount of new software that will be written for an audience of 1-10 will be grea…

[deleted]

Re: A desktop made for one

#100

Post by btbuildem »

> Nor do I have to write documentation for users who don’t exist

Brother mine, you will learn that the future you is ignorant of all the things, and every bit of documentation goes a long way

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