> folks on HN will accept it with a complete lack of discernment
Well, I'm a heavy LLM user, I "believe" LLM helps me a lot for some tasks, but I'm also a developer with decades of experience, so I'm not gonna claim it'll help non-programmers to build software, or whatever. They're tools, not solutions in themselves.
But even us "folks on HN" who generally keep up with where the ecosystem is going, have a limit I suppose. You need to substantiate what you're saying, and if you're saying you've managed to create a browser, better let others verify that somehow.
The second top comment is my own (skeptical) comment, with 20 points at this moment. Thanks to those 20 people, I felt compelled to write the blog-post in this submission, and try to ask a bit clearer "what is going on?", since apparently we're at least 20 people who is wondering about this.
Right, because it IS coming true (gotta be careful with that word choice - "coming true" and "has come true" mean different things.)
There are already multiple attempts at building a from-scratch browser with LLM assistance. Unsurprisingly none of them have achieved full working browser status yet, several weeks after their attempts started.
I certainly don’t think Simon is a shill. He’s obviously a highly talented person, who in my opinion just doesn’t exercise appropriate discernment in some cases.
Edit: Of course, this isn’t a trait unique to Simon either. Everybody has blind spots, and it’s reasonable to be excited when new tech is released. On an unrelated note, my intent is to push back against some of the people here who try to shut down skepticism. Obviously, this doesn’t describe Simon, but I’ve seen others here who try to silence skeptical voices. This comes across as highly controlling and insecure.
I do not think you are reacting to what I said in good faith.
> he better hope he's on the right side of history here, as otherwise he will have burnt his reputation
That's something I've actually given quite a lot of thought to. My reputation and credibility matters a great deal to me. If it turns out this entire LLM thing was an over-hyped scam I'll take a very big hit to that reputation, and I'll deserve it.
(If AI rises up and tries to kill or enslave us all I'll be too busy fighting back to care.)
> but I'm also a developer with decades of experience, so I'm not gonna claim it'll help non-programmers to build software, or whatever. They're tools, not solutions in themselves.
Also with decades experience, I'd say that it depends how big the non-programmer is dreaming:
To agree with you: A well-meaning friend sent an entrepreneur my direction, whose idea was "Uber for aircraft". I tried to figure out exactly what they meant, ending the conversation when I realised all answers were rephrasing of that vague three words pitch, that they didn't really know what they wanted to do in any specific enumerable sense.
LLMs can't solve the problem when even the person asking doesn't know what they want.
But on the other end the scale, I've been asked to give an estimate for an app which, in its entirety, would've been one day's work even with the QA and acceptance testing and going through the Apple App Store upload process. Like, I kept asking if there was any other hidden complexity, and nope, the entire pitch was what you'd give as a pre-interview code-challenge.
An LLM would've spat out the solution to that in less time than I spent with the people who'd asked me to estimate it.
Well, I'm a heavy LLM user, I "believe" LLM helps me a lot for some tasks, but I'm also a developer with decades of experience, so I'm not gonna claim it'll help non-programmers to build software, or whatever. They're tools, not solutions in themselves.
But even us "folks on HN" who generally keep up with where the ecosystem is going, have a limit I suppose. You need to substantiate what you're saying, and if you're saying you've managed to create a browser, better let others verify that somehow.