This is fascinating, thanks for the link. I love to learn about big systems that are developed in the same room where the problem they're solving lives, so to speak.
Too few of these are revealed to the rest of us, as the piece notes. It's a shame, there's lots to learn there. Instead most will be lost to the mists of time, and some dumpster diving digital archaeologist will have to get lucky for us to hear about them.
there’s a difference between software development and software engineering. everyone is a software developer now, engineering is hard - always has, always will be but the skills to be an engineer are now very different.
forking vscode? simple. extensions not so simple. they are controlled by microsoft. without them you’ll run into continual papercuts as a vendor who has forked vscode.
This is the 9-month recap of my "The Future Belongs to People Who Do Things" talk.
Inside:
- The problems with AGENTS . md
- The problems with LLM model selectors
- Best practices for LLM context windows
- AI usage mandates at employers
- Employment performance review dynamic changes
- The world's first vibe-coded emoji RPN calculator in COBOL
- The world's first vibe-coded genz compiler (CURSED)
and a final urge to do things, as this is perhaps the last time I deliver this talk. It's been nine months since the invention of tool-calling LLMs, and VC subsidies have already started to disappear.
If people haven't taken action, they're falling behind because it's becoming increasingly cost-prohibitive to undertake personal upskilling.
Well, actually, the funny story is Cursed is actually three different compilers:
1. It was first written in C
2. Then it was rewritten in Rust
3. Finally, it was rewritten in Zig
All part of research, learning how to drive these models and discover their underlying behaviours. I reckon you could get a comparable compiler going in under a month or less for less than $4k USD.
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