I can't tell if this is the Piss Christ of the software (I hesitate to call it "development") world, or if we are watching a GG Allin show. It's sobering to watch people uncritically take cues from these Steve Yegge artifacts as though the software development enterprise had always been like this.
Welcome to Gas City
31–40 of 59 posts
Re: Welcome to Gas City
#32Came here to say that a lot of these LLM posts make me feel like I was hit by a hammer and I can't understand the world anymore. Thankfully, the HN comments confirm that this is as insane as I thought it was.
Re: Welcome to Gas City
#33I really fundamentally do not understand what problem Gas City solves that is not already solved by normal subagent orchestration patterns. If you want to call your main LLM session the "mayor" and have it delegate its work out to planners and coders and reviewers and QA and so on, this is already a thing you can do! If you want to do this in a reusable way you can create skills and subagent definitions and use /comm…
I'm trying to make the phrase "AI DDOSing" happen.
ex. someone's GitHub repo with a ton of code and a README written by AI claiming fantastical features not present in the code.
Or, more subtle someone, "self-DDOS'ing via AI" - thats for when "LLM psychosis" is too strong, i.e. for "I went too far down a rabbit hole with the interactive chatbot for a month and now I have 1M LOC and 95% test coverage and an app that I don't understand"
I quit my job at Google in 2023 and have spent 2.5 years working on an LLM-based agentic app.
To me, this looks like an unfortunate self-AI-DDOS'ing by someone with even more runway than my seemingly infinite runway.
It's well-meaning, like, in 2030 I'm fairly sure we'll have a meta-layer and simplistic "here's a bug, read files, edit, fix" will seem slow/strangled. But he's at least a couple years ahead of the models, and whatever metalayer exists won't have the bizarre UX model.
Re: Welcome to Gas City
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
It could be either. The bigger critique that people have is that the entire thing is an obvious LARP. None of this is "built for enterprise" or deployed in common ops. This is a zero-risk, zero-judgement project where vanity PRs are encouraged so that another agent can take credit for the vanity fix.
> the entire thing is an obvious LARP Eh, plenty of people play with Sims. Having them do something that feels even tangentially useful has an understandable appeal.
That's fine, I also have side projects that do absolutely nothing useful. Most people are taking issue with the deluded "it's all so obvious" rhetoric used in Yegge's writing.
Re: Welcome to Gas City
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
What jank does Skyrim have. The whole thing is like 6 GB.
It's foolish to even start listing, but here's one: physics bound to FPS
Are the quake, goldsource, source, etc engines jank? Because they all did this, to some extent.
It might be harder to find an engine from the early 2010's that didn't tie at least some physics to FPS.
Re: Welcome to Gas City
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's foolish to even start listing, but here's one: physics bound to FPS
Are the quake, goldsource, source, etc engines jank? Because they all did this, to some extent. It might be harder to find an engine from the early 2010's that didn't tie at least some physics to FPS.
> to some extent
You answer your own question! Not remotely to the same extent. Quake, for instance, gave a small advantage for jump height [with high FPS]. Skyrim would outright break.
Also, you've listed three generations of the same family; goldsrc, the child of Quake, predates Skyrim/Creation by at least a decade. Of those, Source would be the timely match. Not even close to the same amount of jank. Just... no. You aren't tricking me into writing lists.
I don't really intend to be critical of Skyrim, like many: I love the jank. It's expected. It's a Bethesda game.
Re: Welcome to Gas City
#37Re: Welcome to Gas City
#38i feel like the only way this post isn't depressing is if it's supposed to be funny
Re: Welcome to Gas City
#39I really fundamentally do not understand what problem Gas City solves that is not already solved by normal subagent orchestration patterns. If you want to call your main LLM session the "mayor" and have it delegate its work out to planners and coders and reviewers and QA and so on, this is already a thing you can do! If you want to do this in a reusable way you can create skills and subagent definitions and use /comm…
I'm trying to make the phrase "AI DDOSing" happen. ex. someone's GitHub repo with a ton of code and a README written by AI claiming fantastical features not present in the code. Or, more subtle someone, "self-DDOS'ing via AI" - thats for when "LLM psychosis" is too strong, i.e. for "I went too far down a rabbit hole with the interactive chatbot for a month and now I have 1M LOC and 95% test coverage and an app that I…
Someone has to be bleeding edge
Re: Welcome to Gas City
#40I really fundamentally do not understand what problem Gas City solves that is not already solved by normal subagent orchestration patterns. If you want to call your main LLM session the "mayor" and have it delegate its work out to planners and coders and reviewers and QA and so on, this is already a thing you can do! If you want to do this in a reusable way you can create skills and subagent definitions and use /comm…
I listened to his podcast on Pragmatic Engineer. I don't think he specifically addressed what it solved, but he talked about shifting the Overton window in regards to what's possible with AI agents. I'm not arguing that he actually accomplishes this -- just noting that his goal seems to be less "create something useful" and more so "create something that gets people's attention and maybe gets them to thinking about AI in a different way".
Cynically, he published a book on vibe coding recently, so he may just be grabbing attention as some effort to boost book sales.