I've had the pleasure of following Peter's progress on this project over the past 18 months or so, and it's been incredible to see how far he's taken it.
When he first described it to me, I didn't really "get" it (is it a game? a simulation? some other sort of environment?), and it wasn't until seeing an actual demo and hearing Peter explain his thinking more deeply that it clicked.
It's basically a giant simulation environment that is 1) visually stunning (and all visual aspects are meaningful / carry semantic information and aren't just glitter), 2) technically quite impressive, and 3) built for rapid exploration and experimentation. If that sounds at all interesting, you should watch the video to hear Peter's talk!
(Writing this as someone who generally doesn't like to watch videos online; this is one of the rare cases where I think it's worth it, and a video is a better format than text in explaining the thing.)
What I really want, is to run and experiment with it myself, locally. But I couldn't find a repository anywhere, even from his linked GitHub profile. You happen to know if it's online somewhere?
Aw, shucks. Oh well, guess he at least have another follower, looks like really interesting stuff :) Looks like fun to play around with and get inspired by.
We were among the first Paper users (starting from the private beta). We loved the product for the first few years, but then it stagnated. We finally switched away from it a year and a half ago.
Their export feature has been broken for over a year. Support hasn't helped, and our data is still trapped.
Recurse Center (YC S10) | Career Facilitator / Full-Cycle Recruiter | Onsite | Brooklyn | Full-time | $70-135k + good benefits
We operate a programming retreat with an integrated recruiting agency.
We're hiring a Career Facilitator to support our mission to transform lives by helping people direct themselves. This is a full-time, onsite role in Brooklyn with meaningful work, good benefits, great colleagues, clear goals, and a healthy culture.
We're a small, privately held business with no outside investors (except for YC, which invested ~$17k in 2010). We do not plan to raise money or go public.
I don't agree with your characterization of my post, but I do appreciate your sharing this piece (and the fun flashback to old, oversized issues of GWS). Thanks for sharing it! Such a tragedy that Holt died shortly after he wrote that, I would have loved to hear what he thought of the last few decades of computing.
Same, after reading your post, it sent me down reading all sorts of guest articles he did left and right, and it really made me wonder what he'd think of all this. I feel like his views on technology changed over his lifetime. He got more.. I dunno, cynical over time?
This was a really fascinating project to work on because of the breadth of experiences and perspectives people have on LLMs, even when those people all otherwise have a lot in common (in this case, experienced programmers, all Recurse Center alums, all professional programmers in some capacity, almost all in the US, etc). I can't think of another area in programming where opinions differ this much.
As a recurse alum (s14 batch 2) I loved reading this. I loved my time at recurse and learned lots.
This highlight from the post really resonates:
“ Real growth happens at the boundary of what you can do and what you can almost do. Used well, LLMs can help you more quickly find or even expand your edge, but they risk creating a gap between the edge of what you can produce and what you can understand.
RC is a place for rigor. You should strive to be more rigorous, not less, when using AI-powered tools to learn, though exactly what you need to be rigorous about is likely different when using them.”
Recurse Center (YC S10) | Career Facilitator | Onsite | Brooklyn | Full-time
We operate a programming retreat with an integrated recruiting agency.
We're hiring a Career Facilitator to support our mission to transform lives by helping people direct themselves. This is a full-time, onsite role in Brooklyn with meaningful work, good benefits, great colleagues, clear goals, and a healthy culture.
We're a small, privately held business with no outside investors (except for YC, which invested ~$17k in 2010). We do not plan to raise money or go public.
Yes! I've noticed it's 10x worse for my professional email address than my personal one; nearly all of the spam that gets through Gmail's filters is (horribly targeted) B2B marketing. Is that what others are seeing too?
Submitter and author here: My friend Dave and I made this over a decade ago, and I just stumbled on it again. I found it to be a fun walk down memory lane, and more broadly, an interesting time capsule of HN's culture and tropes.
Thanks for making this. I saw it back then and thought it hit the nail on the head. It still does -- if you hadn't put (2012) readers would think it was made today.
It was awesome! I think it misses just two things: "Coder's Generalizations on Software Architecture/Careers in Tech", or "Venture Investor's Generalizations on Society".
Oh, forgot: "Another Very Long New Yorker Article Philosophizing on Their Local Stuff"
If you attend RC and want a new job afterwards (either right away or years later), we have a team to help you. We can suggest specific openings (after discussing and hearing your preferences), review your resume, set up mock interviews, and provide whatever support you’d like throughout your search.
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This all works (and we can keep our retreats free for all participants) because we have contingency recruiting agreements with a number of tech companies, and those companies pay us a fee whenever they hire someone we refer to them.
When he first described it to me, I didn't really "get" it (is it a game? a simulation? some other sort of environment?), and it wasn't until seeing an actual demo and hearing Peter explain his thinking more deeply that it clicked.
It's basically a giant simulation environment that is 1) visually stunning (and all visual aspects are meaningful / carry semantic information and aren't just glitter), 2) technically quite impressive, and 3) built for rapid exploration and experimentation. If that sounds at all interesting, you should watch the video to hear Peter's talk!
(Writing this as someone who generally doesn't like to watch videos online; this is one of the rare cases where I think it's worth it, and a video is a better format than text in explaining the thing.)
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