On the other hand, they are easier to build in a cross platform manner.

Linux is probably the most difficult platform to build GUI for, because of all the fragmentation, X11, Wayland, all the different flavors of GUI toolkits, driver issues, window managers issues, font issues etc.

TUI are a bit like web apps in that regard, using the terminal instead of a browser to abstract the platform.

Zig seems to be most prominent C alternative today, well funded, with some high-profile support, excellent engineering and both a loyal fanbase and haters.

That said, as longtime C user, I've been tempted by Jai and Zig and C3, but I am not ready to make the switch yet. The benefits are simply not big enough.

And there is something new that was not apparent in when this article was written: a lot of code is LLM written now, giving old and mainstream language an undeniable advantage. Also, Rust, with the built-in safeguards, is pretty AI assistance friendly.

The intuition we have about the nature of cognition and its whole shape and limits is almost entirely built by looking at ourselves and our peers, comparing that to an ant. I feel this is largely naive and misguided.

Past experience has shown what while Turing complete config is powerful, it is also a double edged sword and I would be wary of using it.

I've also often be irritated by the slow and sometimes absurd processes of French administration, and I am pretty sure the whole thing is far from running as efficiently as it could.

That said, I gave way too much credence to Musk and his clique, turned out the efficiency theatre was nothing more than a smoke screen to cover a different style of operation.

I am not sure they even tried to cut waste in a meaningful way, or if they had the competence to do so.

He likely developed some irrational belief that clever and young beats anything else, and saw an echo of his own bravado in Alexandr Wang.

Turns out his heuristics were not calibrated properly.

And it works.

We're not saying many ex or current Meta employees talking about their experiences here, even if I am sure that HN is pretty popular among this crowd.

And of course this is not unique to Zuck/Meta. We don't hear much from people working for Musk either.

But from the few interactions I had with him I would say he is quite abrasive, stubborn and probably somewhat on the spectrum.

But there is a special kind of unpleasantness in writing/debugging netcode for large projects, I don't think you can be agreeable and still you your job correctly.

The company was successful, had one of the most prestigious brand in the game industry, was early enough to capitalize on the rise of PC gaming, incredible talents and tech.

Yet it didn't transform into a Blizzard or Epic.

And it seems that both the early success and stall were the responsibility of one very talented but somewhat obtuse nerd.

I think this is smart and not very risky. Tesla is playing a similar game with Optimus, for now Hyundai/Boston Dynamics is at least 5 years ahead.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48561089

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The terminal is an old but astonishingly powerful user interface that is still evolving.

Good terminals can be very snappy and configurable in ways that most GUI are not.

There is also arguably an aesthetic/fetishism appeal to it.

I've worked in the terminal at some point of my career, as there was not many other choices, and I understand how someone can get really used to it.

I found it less effective than free copilot autocomplete on vanilla VSCode.

Taxes is human labor dedicated to the maintenance of state.

I think it is naive to think that once humans are not needed they will magically be fed by the machines.

The owner will still expect to trade the output for something else for his benefit.

What fuels the economy, for now, is human work. Being a consumer simply means that you are heavily incentivised to take part (by working).

If machines can do the same or better, whoever owns them will end-up seeing unproductive humans as dangerous and wasteful bloat.

It won’t be a life of infinite leisure if you don’t own machines.