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Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

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Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#121

Post by pjmlp »

wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #71
rdevilla wrote: post #67

Ten years ago, I would have kowtowed to someone elite enough to build something like this. Today, I just think, "how long would LLMs have taken to write this?" I mourn the death of a human artform.

It's far more exciting than sad. Got an idea that you'd need assembly language for - now you can do it instead of..... never doing it because it would have been impossible for you in any practical way. Look to the positive instead of lamenting something that never would have happened. It's unbelievably exciting that you can now program a computer virtually without the limitation of your ability to hand code it.

Which is why now companies can happily reduce head count.

Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#122

Post by lofaszvanitt »

Thanemate wrote: post #56

I'm oddly enthusiastic about seeing someone who beings the HACKER in HackerNews. But at the same time, this made me remember the days when display of skill and craftsmanship were rewarded in the industry. Maybe it's finally time to move on from being a career programmer.

success through perseverance and toughness - fucked by AI

success through cleverness and inventiveness - not yet fucked by AI

achievement through stubborn persistence - you can still dig deep holes in the garden

you still could have a character, if you were lucky

human agency? not yet fucked up, but it's gonna be

achievement earned through one's own qualities or effort? - intact somewhat

Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#123

Post by vladms »

Thanemate wrote: post #101
wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand for some people its the display of human wizardy that matters. For me it's about making the computer do awesome things - I do not care how I get there I just want it to do whatever I can conjure in my head.

As much as I enjoy the novelty of asking anime pictures from chatGPT I do not, for a single moment, consider myself a doer of anime pictures. And a fair aside, the result will be "good enough" approximation of what I conjured in my head, but never the thing itself. For me to do the exact thing I conjured in my head it will require to pick up the mouse and draw the rest of the owl. I don't know if that's more telling…

True if you use only chatGPT to do something and accept the generated stuff as the final output.

Probably not the case for anime pictures, but in other domains, you can use chatGPT as a first level and then go on the improve it from there. To make a parallel: if you draw with a pencil on a piece of paper, you would still think of yourself a doer even if you did not manufacture your pencil or paper.

Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#124

Post by vladms »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #86
wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's far more exciting than sad. Got an idea that you'd need assembly language for - now you can do it instead of..... never doing it because it would have been impossible for you in any practical way. Look to the positive instead of lamenting something that never would have happened. It's unbelievably exciting that you can now program a computer virtually without the limitation of your ability to hand code it.

> without the limitation of your ability to hand code it. Isn't that kind of view pathetic and sad, though? Why would anyone pick up and guitar or play a piano if they could just listen to the same song already made by someone else? I struggle to understand this view of people that pretend to not understand why being an expert of some skill is perceived as valuable by some people. This is also belies next problem wit…

In my experience people that did not hand code enough imagine that the hard part is coding, and not clearly defining all the possible edge cases and use cases.

So, in my view, more people will (or should) understand now what is hard when building complex things, if they pass the stage of "I have a nice POC that works for this one case".

Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#125

Post by yolo3000 »

noduerme wrote: post #105
dwedge wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Artisanal code has a future. Maybe not a high paid one but maybe we go back to roots. if you enjoy programming and were never focused on output or on pipelines, LLM doesn't offer the same ezperience

Sometime around when wordpress came out, or at least 2005 or so, I started positioning myself as a bespoke web designer, then app developer. Whereas anyone could get a site done, I turned myself to doing things that hadn't been done before, for which standard solutions wouldn't fit. I turned away 80% of jobs and raised my rate from $25 to $100, then to $300/hr. To me, pricing and only doing bespoke work was a defensi…

So what could you do that people paid you 300/hr? And how long where these gigs?

Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#126

Post by srean »

wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #82
nzhsbdb wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The result is unimpressive either way -- it's the journey that is exciting for these kinds of projects

I understand for some people its the display of human wizardy that matters. For me it's about making the computer do awesome things - I do not care how I get there I just want it to do whatever I can conjure in my head.

It's usually not even the display.

When I go on a trek, the end of trek landmark is nowhere nearly as significant as the experience of reaching it.

If I were to be magically transported there without the lives experience it would take almost all of the joy out of it. Some people get a kick out of doing hard things that are interesting but seemingly beyond one's ability. Making it an easy commodity spoils the fun.

As for teleportation, if it were, say, trip to moons of Saturn I can make exceptions.

Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#127

Post by MagicMoonlight »

nzhsbdb wrote: post #75
wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's far more exciting than sad. Got an idea that you'd need assembly language for - now you can do it instead of..... never doing it because it would have been impossible for you in any practical way. Look to the positive instead of lamenting something that never would have happened. It's unbelievably exciting that you can now program a computer virtually without the limitation of your ability to hand code it.

The result is unimpressive either way -- it's the journey that is exciting for these kinds of projects

Nah. I'm not going to yearn for the days of hitting steel on an anvil when we can have steel produced in a factory.

Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#128

Post by dragontamer »

imtomt wrote: post #115
dragontamer wrote: post #74

Hmmmm. One of my first assembly projects was a CGI Script 100% in x86 assembly. A full web server is certainly more impressive! Though I'd recommend to beginners to look up CGI and mod_cgi in Apache first lol

Woah! I honestly feel more intimidated writing a CGI script in assembly than I was writing a server, lol. CGI support has been on my mind for a couple weeks, but I haven't really dug into it yet. I'd love to see yours if it's hosted anywhere! Could be a great reference when I do.

Really? It's a bit of a nonsense that I did so long ago so it's weird to hear someone interested in it...

The script has been lost to time. I wrote it 5+ computers ago and I don't even know where input that backup...

The overall gist is that CGI Bin specification sets Environmental variables, STDIN and STDOUT to various values. A minimal pure assembly that writes Hello World over stdout is your minimalist CGI Script.

A bit of research into what those STDIN/Environmental variables is needed for more. I knew this may e 20+ years ago but have long forgotten....

With access to the various input parameters offered over CGI, you can easily access form data (buttons and whatever clicked by the user). Use some smart file writing to store sessions and off you go....

-------

Maybe start with a Perl CGI tutorial. Then go backwards to C, and finally raw assembly by hand

Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#129

Post by MagicMoonlight »

stbev wrote: post #116
qingcharles wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As in 3D software renderer? I cut my teeth on those throughout my teens and the start of my professional career, in x86 and C. I wanted to see how an LLM would do writing one in pure 8088 assembler for CGA and it one-shot a nice demo (I fed it the vectors for the Elite ship in the prompt): https://imgur.com/a/Dy5rUku

Yes, exactly, a 3D software renderer. But the goal is to do (almost) everything from scratch and by hand. No LLMs, no std library, no compilers. Just a few imported math functions (such as sin and cos). Not the same as bare metal programming but close

Why would you screw yourself like that when it's already a huge project?

Re: Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning

#130

Post by alex_suzuki »

isatty wrote: post #81
rdevilla wrote: post #67

Ten years ago, I would have kowtowed to someone elite enough to build something like this. Today, I just think, "how long would LLMs have taken to write this?" I mourn the death of a human artform.

Human artform is still alive and well as evidenced by this post. Yes, an LLM can write it, it’ll probably work. Yet, it’ll remain meaningless slop while this is not.

The problem, at least for me, is that by now I'm so desensitized that I won't even bother looking at something, because it could potentially be the product of a few prompts. The LLM noise is drowning out the human signal, so to speak. Same for articles, blog posts, etc. It only takes a few em-dashes, a few "it's not this, it's that" to lose faith in the text's authenticity, and with that, any interest in its content.
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