101–110 of 145 posts
Significant typo I assume?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every line of code is technical debt. Some of the hardest projects I’ve ever worked on involved deleting as much code as I wrote.
Exactly. I once worked on a large project where the primary contractor was Accenture. They threw a party when we hit a million lines of C++. I sat in the back at a table with the other folks who knew enough to realize it should have been a wake.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What people take issue with is the claim that agents built a web browser "from scratch" only to find by looking deeper that they were using Servo, WGPU, Taffy, winit, and other libraries which do most of the heavy lifting. It's like claiming "my dog filed my taxes for me!" when in reality everything was filled out in TurboTax and your dog clicked the final submit button. Technically true, but clearly disingenuous. I'…
I agree that "from scratch" is a misrepresentation. But it was accompanied by a link to the GitHub repo, so you can hardly claim that they were deliberately hiding the truth.
If anything, that proves the point that they weren't rigorous! They claimed a thing. The thing didn't accomplish what they said. I'm not saying that they hid it but that they misrepresented the thing that they built. My comment to you is that the interview didn't directly firmly pressure them on this.
Generating a million lines of code in parallel isn't impressive. Burning a mountain of resources in parallel isn't noteworthy (see: the weekly post of someone with an out of control EC2 instance racking up $100k of charges.)
It would have been remarkable if they'd built a browser from scratch, which they said they did, except they didn't. It was a 50 million token hackathon project that didn't work, dressed up as a groundbreaking example of their product.
As feedback, I hope in the future you'll push back firmly on these types of claims when given the opportunity, even if it makes the interviewee uncomfy. Incredible claims require incredible evidence. They didn't have it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that "from scratch" is a misrepresentation. But it was accompanied by a link to the GitHub repo, so you can hardly claim that they were deliberately hiding the truth.
Sorry, just to be clear, the defense that they pulled something out of their ass is that they linked to something that outed them? So they couldn't have actually have been overstating it? If anything, that proves the point that they weren't rigorous! They claimed a thing. The thing didn't accomplish what they said. I'm not saying that they hid it but that they misrepresented the thing that they built. My comment to y…
I don't think directly accusing them of being misleading about what they had done would have supported that goal, so I didn't do it.
Instead I made sure to dig into things like what QuickJS was doing in there and why it used Taffy as part of the conversation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So grifting is okay, just because someday the grift might come true?
Meh. What do you think the grift is here exactly? No one’s trying to sell the newly minted source code to a web browser. If this is the first time you’ve encountered a hype bubble, it’s a good opportunity to learn so that you can navigate the next one more easily.
The obvious? Selling subscriptions to individuals, reaching higher-ups with bombastic headlines, reaching potential investors, perpetuating the bubble.
If we have been complaining about bloat before, the amount of bloat we are going to witness in the future is unfathomable. How can anyone be proud of a claim like "It's 3M+ lines of code across thousands of files." _especially_ when a lot of this code is relying on external dependencies? Less code is almost always better, not more! I'm also getting really tired of claims like "we are X% more productive with AI now!"…
I mostly agree with you but I AM super productive with AI. I'm working on a side-project and have built in 2-3 months what my quite productive team of 3-4 people would take 4-6 months to build in 2016. And I'm not talking to generative slop but real production grade code that I have reviewed+approved or manually refactored before merging. Like you I'm not impressed by these toy projects but the productivity gain is v…
But how do you measure it? All the metrics I see being chased (metrics that were never accepted as productivity measurements before) can be gamed with slop, and so slop is what we'll get.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then you should have no difficulty providing evidence for your claim. Since you have been engaging in language lawyering in this thread, it is only fair your evidence be held up to the same standard and must be incontrovertible evidence for your claims with zero wiggle room. Even though I have no burden of proof to debunk your claims as you have provided no evidence for your claims, I will point out that another comm…
I mean I interviewed the engineer for 47 minutes and asked him about this and many other things directly. I think I've done enough homework on this one. I take back the implication I inadvertently made here that it compiled cleanly the whole time - I know that's not the case, we discussed that in our interview: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/23/fastrender/#intermitte... I'm frustrated at how many people are carry…
I am frustrated at people loudly and proudly "releasing" a system they claim works when it does not. They could have pointed at a specific version that worked, but chose not to indicating they are either intentionally deceptive or clueless. Arguing they had no opportunity for nuance and thus had no choice but to make false statements for their own benefit is ethical bankruptcy. If they had no opportunity for nuance, then they could make a statement that errs against their benefit; that is ethical behavior.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean I interviewed the engineer for 47 minutes and asked him about this and many other things directly. I think I've done enough homework on this one. I take back the implication I inadvertently made here that it compiled cleanly the whole time - I know that's not the case, we discussed that in our interview: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/23/fastrender/#intermitte... I'm frustrated at how many people are carry…
Okay, so the evidence you are presenting is that the entity pushing intentionally deceptive marketing with a direct conflict of interest said they were not lying. I am frustrated at people loudly and proudly "releasing" a system they claim works when it does not. They could have pointed at a specific version that worked, but chose not to indicating they are either intentionally deceptive or clueless. Arguing they had…
absolutely
and clueless managers seeing these headlines will almost certainly lead to people losing their jobs
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean I interviewed the engineer for 47 minutes and asked him about this and many other things directly. I think I've done enough homework on this one. I take back the implication I inadvertently made here that it compiled cleanly the whole time - I know that's not the case, we discussed that in our interview: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/23/fastrender/#intermitte... I'm frustrated at how many people are carry…
Okay, so the evidence you are presenting is that the entity pushing intentionally deceptive marketing with a direct conflict of interest said they were not lying. I am frustrated at people loudly and proudly "releasing" a system they claim works when it does not. They could have pointed at a specific version that worked, but chose not to indicating they are either intentionally deceptive or clueless. Arguing they had…
I do not think Cursor's statements about this project were remotely misleading enough to justify this backlash.
Which of those things would you classify as "false statements"? The use of "from scratch"?