travisgriggs

This.

And I wish I had thought to grab that nick years ago…

When tweetles battle beetles… AND…

I think this was once the case. Smalltalk was very "so last year" once Java Marketing overtook the world (I worked for Cincom, final resting place of VisualWorks Smalltalk, may it rest in peace).

At this point, I think it's flipped. The people that might be attracted to it would probably enjoy the retro hat tip. The various language wars have all been pointlessly adjudicated, and lost in time, first to the dominance/explosion of JavaScript only programmers, and now due to LLM generated code.

Learning Smalltalk, and practicing it heavily for 20 years was probably the single best thing I learned in programming during 35+ years. It helped me get very good at modelling things. I work in Swift/Kotlin/Elixir/C now days, and I've learned some great things from those systems as well. But how to build representations of real world data as well as structure concepts/relationships more virtual, hands down to Smalltalk (for me).

My media diet has dropped steadily for 15 years now. I don’t know how much of it is just aging, and how much truly is tired/fatigue for the products offered. And the burden/complexity of streaming has basically just led me to throw my hands in the air and find other things to do. I already spend too much time tapping on my phone, much less watch yet another screen.

How was this assembled? From a meta point of view, how much AI was used to curate and highlite the goals; how much was used to assemble the site itself? Or deploy it?

Just finished Trade of Blood (most recent #3 of the Din and Ana books). Phenomenal. Been a while since I’ve enjoyed a series this much. Good/fun writing. Great underlying messages.

> The company's philosophy on the issue seems to be rooted in the hacker ethos of not giving repetitive work to humans if a machine could do it. When a machine can't do it, Google's thinking is to improve the machine. If the systems are good enough, nobody will need support.

I have not worked at Google, but rather at 4 different companies that built automation machinery (ie multi discipline execution between mechanical, electrical, and software engineers). In none of those cases was it ever “the hacker ethos”. It was mid to upper level management whose incentive loops tended to be associated more with either shareholder perception or HR head counts. All of the engineers were usually begging the company to do a better job (allocate resources) to last mile customer support. Engineers build things, and are usually more satisfied if the products they build are well received because of the “last mile” bit where someone helps a customer appreciate their creation.

> and nobody would elect one

Hmmm… this is giving me thought actually. Given the choice between that and the current administration where the goals of self destruction are strongly in evidence, it’s actually worth thinking about. At least. Let me get back to you :)

On a tangential note, I’m curious if researchers have started running virtual simulations, where sandboxed AIs are used as decision makers of key political and business positions?

Even kind of fits the model. All of the creativity man has raised is herded to the slaughterhouse and ground up so we end up with a big homogenized mash of ground up creativity, devoid of the life that gave it, rotten if not eaten soon enough.

We also associate laboratories with evil scientists and Frankenstein and the like. I can just hear Boris Karloff (er Bobby Picket) uttering “I was working in the lab late one night. When my eyes beheld an eerie sight… … … …the monster mash”. If anything, I associate _uncertainty_ with labs. The result is never known up front, they’re a place of discovery.

But I get your meaning. What should they be called instead? AI Sausage Factories maybe (cue Upton Sinclair?)?

I am an American. Born here 56 years ago. I think we are alarmingly "far gone".

Everyone gets to name their projects for their own reasons. If the pitch is basically an “alternate apple” macOS, I would have chosen one of the other other (alternate) apple varieties as the root of my OS. Missed opportunity I guess.

Or Jose Valim

No Alan Kay or Dan Ingalls. Surprised

As long as message broadcasting remains cheap (in any form; phone, email, text, etc) it will go on. All modern media has evolved technically (and financially) to benefit the producer (the talker). All at the expense of the consumer (listener). Make outgoing bandwidth cost per instance and you’ll see a reduction/optimization of the production. When signal is free to produce, you end up with a lot of noise.