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  • ubercore · 2 days ago

    I hate to be that guy, but... one week old project, clear signs of vibing. I will be shocked if the remaining work listed (cpython test suite) proceeds in any reasonable timeline.

    This is a pretty hard problem to just solve in a week.

    EDIT: and man, these kind of comments LLM created comments are really starting to grind my gears as my job slowly turns into reviewing LLM PRs:

    > Known gaps at the language level are burned down through the ratcheted floors above — the committed floor files, not this README, are the authoritative compatibility baseline.

    • baq · 2 days ago

      of course it is vibed.

      it doesn't matter as long as it works.

      • ActionHank · 2 days ago

        That's the neat part, when it's vibed it works, until it doesn't and then it's really hard to make it work again.

        • coldtea · 2 days ago

          >when it's vibed it works, until it doesn't and then it's really hard to make it work again

          Is it?

          People have solved AI bugs with AI. If some vibe project eventually hits some bug and stops working, what exactly stops using AI to fix it? Is the idea that bugs will go beyond the limits of AI capability?

          If you meant to say that when an AI vibe coded project beyond some complexity it's difficult for a human coder to manually go through all the code they didn't write, understand it, and find the issue, sure.

          • ubercore · 2 days ago

            The problem is the _way_ AI will solve an AI bug. I've seen the loop countless times. There's a creeping complexity and brittleness that creeps in over time as more and more complexity is left purely to the LLM agent. It will become unsustainable without a human understanding and making course corrections at some point.

            • coldtea · 2 days ago

              In my experience, it just needs some high level guidance.

              And it's quite easy to ask an AI to refactor a certain way too.

              • ubercore · 1 days ago

                Been there done that. My point is that even with Fable being a big improvement, it still needs constant feedback.

                The loops themselves are a lot better, but it still needs judgement calls, and Fable will often take an odd direction, and if you don't catch it, that odd choice will compound as it continues to layer on top.

                • coldtea · 1 days ago

                  >Been there done that. My point is that even with Fable being a big improvement, it still needs constant feedback.

                  Even so, if it does 80% of the work itself, that's still a 5x improvement.

                  Plus it keeps the human coder in control and in the loop (and in a job).

              • int_19h · 1 days ago

                If you just keep throwing feature requests at an LLM, then yes, this happens. However it can self-correct if you specifically give it engineering debt / code cleanup as a task. And Fable in particular is very good at this exact thing.

              • LtWorf · 2 days ago

                AI companies are unable to fix the bugs in their own text editors for years… no AI cannot fix bugs, clearly.

                • coldtea · 2 days ago

                  Doesn't matter what AI companies do, since AI companies just "move fast and break things" not caring for bug fixing but for iterating quickly on their agents. That's a business decision, not an AI limitation.

                  If you use AI yourself, with a focus on bug fixing and stability, you'll find that AI can fix bugs just fine.

                  • LtWorf · 1 days ago

                    It matters, it shows the limits of the technology, and they have all the interest to showcase how good it is (and are failing to show it can fix bugs)

                    • coldtea · 1 days ago

                      They have little interest to "showcase how good it is with doing that" since (a) people already see it's good and are hooked, (b) they don't want to stop the pace of changes and fall behind on features by focusing on stability and bug fixing.

                      • LtWorf · 1 days ago

                        They literally could use unlimited tokens and focus on both… it's telling that they cannot.

                        And they are TRYING to fix the bugs, they just keep failing over and over, so your reply is entirely incorrect.

                        Nice try though.

                        • coldtea · 1 days ago

                          >They literally could use unlimited tokens and focus on both… it's telling that they cannot.

                          If you ship updates fast, you can't just 'focus on both'. You focus on one or another, doesn't matter if you use "unlimited tokens", same way 9 pregnant women can't make a baby in a month.

                          >And they are TRYING to fix the bugs, they just keep failing over and over, so your reply is entirely incorrect.

                          That they "keep failing over and over" is a huge overstatement, it just has some bugs like other software has, so your point can be simply dismissed.

                          • LtWorf · 1 days ago

                            > you can't just 'focus on both'

                            Can you explain why not? Just spin up another agent. 9 pregnant women can do 9 babies in 9 months.

                            This is a real question. I assure you that teams of more than 1 developer do exist, so I don't see why agents could not work on the same code.

                            > That they "keep failing over and over" is a huge overstatement

                            You call it an overstatement because of your religious beliefs. Unfortunately religious beliefs don't really change the fact that they keep failing in fixing their things.

                            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfYsSFY4l18

                • timacles · 2 days ago

                  AI will simply code you into an architectural corner where you can’t get out of without a refactor.

                  • nielsbot · 1 days ago

                    to be fair that happens with code i write too…

                    • coldtea · 1 days ago

                      Not if you give it guidance for the architecture and don't just blindly let it one-shot after one-shot of huge chunks of the program.

                      Besides, AI can also be told to do the refactor.

                • kameit00 · 2 days ago

                  In 12 months… vibe code mess. Or discontinued. Or both.

                  • ttul · 2 days ago

                    How much time have you spent with Fable? We're in new territory here. It does not create messes.

                    • ubercore · 2 days ago

                      Anecdote, yes, but I am _right now in the middle of helping Fable clean up a mess_. Complex code is hard and Fable still makes mistakes.

                      • what · 2 days ago

                        >this time it’s different!

                        Same thing people claim every time a new model is released, yet never seems to be true.

                        • int_19h · 1 days ago

                          It was true every time though. The capacity of frontier models to tackle complicated issues has improved immensely. I still remember the first time I saw a model do a non-trivial issue end to end, and that was less than two years ago. Now they can genuinely do whole projects with human only as a supervisor / quality checker.

                          Do they still make mistakes? Sure. So do humans, though, so it would be unrealistic to expect perfection. The question is: does Fable make fewer mistakes than the median human coder? And at this point I'm genuinely not sure anymore.

                        • nozzlegear · 2 days ago

                          > We're in new territory here.

                          > It does not create messes.

                          ?

                      • mcphage · 2 days ago

                        Given the stdlib modules listed as "explicitly not done yet", I'm going to say: it doesn't yet, in any meaningful sense. The question then becomes: how confident do we feel that it will work in the near future?

                        • ubercore · 2 days ago

                          I was trying to say "not confident at all" but hedged a bit too much.

                          I see this as a case of the "quick to get to a POC that falls apart after sustained development for the same reasons it didn't work pre-Fable" problem.

                        • nozzlegear · 2 days ago

                          > it doesn't matter as long as it works.

                          I think the clankers would call this a "load bearing statement".

                          • nielsbot · 1 days ago

                            it reads like marketing copy…

                          • getpokedagain · 2 days ago

                            Something working is pointless if there are no users and no need is being addressed.

                          • himata4113 · 2 days ago

                            This is written by fable with the guidance of a very experienced, highly skilled person. See their previous work.

                            • throwaway27448 · 2 days ago

                              Experience doesn't change the fundamental problem. I don't see this project going anywhere for general use beyond their needs.

                              • Dilettante_ · 2 days ago

                                "Very experienced" might mean different things to you. The oldest repo on their GH is from 2017. As for highly skilled: Could you point closer to which parts of their portfolio we are supposed to be awestruck by?

                              • roger_ · 2 days ago

                                This guy is behind the awesome Oh My Pi agent, so I’d give him a chance.

                              • thx67 · 2 days ago

                                These tics are fairly easy to remove via hooks and prompts, but once the codebase is infected, it is 10x as much work to get the agents to stop.

                              • westurner · 2 days ago

                                How does performance compare to RustPython compiled in a similar way?

                                • cuzezzzbbfofai · 2 days ago

                                  Can it run Numpy and Torch?

                                  • smithza · 2 days ago

                                    pickle files are usually the limiter here. I would be surprised if it can handle pickle files since it relies so much on runtime LUTs of the objects and arbitrary object definitions. This usually doesn't work in other use cases such as swig or cython either IIRC.

                                    • cdavid · 2 days ago

                                      For NumPy/Pytorch, the C API is much bigger issue than pickle. I have not looked at the architecture of this, but given it uses its own IR + replaces ref counting w/ a GC, I am assuming it does not have C API compatibility.

                                  • echoangle · 2 days ago

                                    What happens if you call exec/eval? Are they just not available?

                                    • smithza · 2 days ago

                                      this as well as pickle files will likely be unavailable

                                      • leobuskin · 2 days ago

                                        It uses JIT

                                        • skeledrew · 2 days ago

                                          Also getattr/setattr, the magic methods, etc. I imagine this dead on arrival.

                                        • leobuskin · 2 days ago

                                          A few problems with this Fable's project:

                                          1. It's not Python by any means, it's a subset with its own runtime, its own quirks and nuances;

                                          2. It will be impossible to maintain parity with CPython without AI assistance;

                                          3. It will die the same way as dozens of similar (even non-AI projects) died before, and reasons will be the same: (1) and (2).

                                          • subarctic · 2 days ago

                                            "Without ai assistance" - ok, but what about with ai assistance?

                                            • zahlman · 2 days ago

                                              For a project like this, relying on AI assistance also makes it effectively dead in the water.

                                              • minimaxir · 2 days ago

                                                Why?

                                                • all2 · 2 days ago

                                                  Time-cost for machines instead of willing knowledgeable humans. The former requires money, the latter requires passion.

                                                  Arguably, passion for a project is without price.

                                                  • zero1009 · 2 days ago

                                                    Someone pays for the AI? That's the new human maintainer.

                                                    • bloppe · 2 days ago

                                                      Hypothetically, maybe. In practice, probably not.

                                                      • CookieCrisp · 2 days ago

                                                        If it's valuable enough to someone, and it isn't keeping up, someone will pay. If it's not valuable enough for someone to pay, then who cares?

                                                        • jpfromlondon · 1 days ago

                                                          Plenty of important things have been born of passion without necessity.

                                                      • nozzlegear · 2 days ago

                                                        Who will pay if someone, somewhere is not passionate about it?

                                                        • throw1234567891 · 1 days ago

                                                          You can spin up a model locally and pay yourself. Who will maintain the project if the passionate sole maintainer burns out?

                                                          • inigyou · 1 days ago

                                                            Which model works well?

                                                            • all2 · 1 days ago

                                                              Qwen 3.6 27b at q6 works decently well on 24GB of VRAM

                                                            • nozzlegear · 1 days ago

                                                              I strictly use only local models, so I agree, but the project was built with Fable so my argument hinges on the assumption that the maintainer is going to continue using Fable and needs to pay for it.

                                                        • jack_pp · 2 days ago

                                                          Humans have time-cost too, much higher than machines. Considering SOTA right now, for a project like this it would make more sense for the community to contribute and verify tests, sponsor updates with $.

                                                        • wild_pointer · 2 days ago

                                                          Trust

                                                        • simonw · 2 days ago

                                                          Good luck implementing and then maintaining a project of this size and complexity at ~100 lines of verified code per human developer per day.

                                                          • mwcampbell · 7 hours ago

                                                            I wonder how you arrived at that number. Is it perhaps a number that we should aspire to, if we want to write high-quality, maintainable code by hand?

                                                            • simonw · 5 hours ago

                                                              I've been doing some reading recently around what the literature expects a professional software engineer to produce in a day.

                                                              In ~1976 Mythical Man Month era it was around 5 lines of fully debugged assembly.

                                                              Code Complete 2nd edition ~2004 bumped that up to 10-50 delivered lines of code per day.

                                                              I found other estimates of around 20-60. I need to pull them altogether into a cited article.

                                                              Based on that plus my own experience I think 100 lines per day of production-level, reviewed and debugged code was a reasonably higher target for a professional software engineer up until just a couple of years ago.

                                                              Today I'm frequently pushing 2,000 to 4,000 - and that's not vibe coded junk (I can easily hit 10,000+ if I'm not reviewing anything), that's code that I've reviewed and am happy to put my name to.

                                                              Obviously counting lines of code is a stupid, easily gamed metric. But I still think there's signal there. If you want to build a sophisticated piece of software you're going to have to write a bunch of code to do it. Writing at 1,000+ lines of code per day vs 100 will get you there faster.

                                                          • frollogaston · 2 days ago

                                                            Not convinced. I was looking for an answer like "it doesn't actually have parity with CPython." If it does, that's a decent indication that it can be sustained.

                                                          • leobuskin · 2 days ago

                                                            It's possible, but we're at the moment when most of us can ask Fable to implement a custom compiler to a custom target for our favorite language, and even use it as a part of custom solution. Why do I need someone else's implementation? Where's the magic in this project? What's the secret sauce?

                                                            • coldtea · 2 days ago

                                                              >Where's the magic in this project? What's the secret sauce?

                                                              Someone else paying for the tokens.

                                                              Also someone seeing it through (should that come). Obviously we're not "at the moment when most of us can ask Fable to implement a custom compiler to a custom target for our favorite language, and even use it as a part of custom solution", without thousands to spare and lots of time to shape the solution.

                                                              • cyanydeez · 2 days ago

                                                                It's like we invented a worse github.

                                                                • coldtea · 2 days ago

                                                                  Gimphub.

                                                                  • dotancohen · 2 days ago

                                                                    To be fair, most of the training data likely came from GitHub.

                                                                  • hannasanarion · 2 days ago

                                                                    Even if it does cost thousands (does it? I genuinely have no idea how to scope such a thing) that might be a good price if a custom compiler to your custom target is something you really want. People have paid far more for far less.

                                                                    If you're a hobbyist trying to compile python to your weird little arduino based thing, then that's a lot of money and you would want to use somebody else's solution, no doubt.

                                                                    But if you're an aerospace company trying to compile for a flight control computer (and I guess you really want to use python for some reason), spending thousands of dollars on tokens to make and maintain a custom compiler could represent serious savings.

                                                                    The big picture impact of AI that I see/anticipate the most is SAAS dying out because AI coding makes this kind of enablement and support software easier to make in-house, and this feels like an example of that, but maybe I'm seeing what I expect to see.

                                                                    • coldtea · 2 days ago

                                                                      >Even if it does cost thousands (does it? I genuinely have no idea how to scope such a thing) that might be a good price if a custom compiler to your custom target is something you really want. People have paid far more for far less.

                                                                      I wouldn't spend $100K in tokens to get a custom bare metal Python. Or even $10K.

                                                                      And I'd guess that most devs wouldn't either, unless they spend $10K like it's nothing.

                                                                      People that have "paid far more for far less" are people who have the money to buy $10K watches, or fancy multi $1000 clothes.

                                                                      • jack_pp · 2 days ago

                                                                        your first mistake is thinking this would cost that much. with DS4 this might cost far less than 1k imo

                                                                        • int_19h · 1 days ago

                                                                          With DS4 it would have a lot more bugs, too.

                                                                      • imtringued · 1 days ago

                                                                        Just eight years ago basically nobody wanted to pay for compilers and developer tooling, and now you're suggesting people will spend a thousand dollars for a compiler they'll have to maintain themselves just because they're willing to pay for AI generated tokens but not for finished tools?

                                                                        >But if you're an aerospace company trying to compile for a flight control computer (and I guess you really want to use python for some reason), spending thousands of dollars on tokens to make and maintain a custom compiler could represent serious savings.

                                                                        If you're an aerospace company you're willing to pay thousands of dollars for a compiler, because you need a DO-178C certified toolchain so that you can DO-178C certify the whole airframe. Suggesting AI here tells me you have no clue about the realities of aerospace, because you've just thrown out the entire value proposition of the commercial toolchains.

                                                                  • bt1a · 2 days ago

                                                                    it will be impossible to maintain parity with wetware

                                                                    • up2isomorphism · 2 days ago

                                                                      Then the question is why? Because that is an another way of saying donating tokens.

                                                                    • rurban · 2 days ago

                                                                      Reading is hard.

                                                                      It runs and passes the full cpython testsuite, just 5x faster.

                                                                      With AI it's 100x easier to maintain than by hand.

                                                                      It reminds my on pperl. same approach using crane lift. Looks good

                                                                      • ubercore · 2 days ago

                                                                        How am I misreading this part of the readme?

                                                                        > What is explicitly not done yet — this is the active roadmap, in order: > CPython test suite (cpython-full): the standing grind; failures are clustered and burned down per wave.

                                                                        • leobuskin · 2 days ago

                                                                          It passes only curated corpus (snippets), not the full CPython test suite. So, yes, reading is hard. Nothing against AI, btw.

                                                                          • bunderbunder · 2 days ago

                                                                            The “status” section of the project’s readme explicitly says that it is not passing the full test suite, and that the AOT compiler passes fewer tests than the JIT one.

                                                                            It also explicitly says that they’re still working on building out the standard library.

                                                                            I’m maybe not as pessimistic as leobuskin, but they are absolutely right that this is not the first time someone has tried to build an alternative Python implementation, and that all previous ones have failed because they weren’t able to get close enough to 100% parity to be acceptable to most users. Python is an unusually quirky language. I kind of wonder if “written in Rust” adds an extra headwind here because there’s nothing even remotely memory-safe about Python’s extension mechanism. I don’t know enough to know, but I have read about the death of a few of these projects in the past and a common theme of the post-mortem seems to be, “It went so smoothly at the start that we were caught off guard how much of a brick wall the last 5% was going to be.”

                                                                            • anitil · 2 days ago

                                                                              Your reply would have been much better without the first line [0]

                                                                              > Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that"

                                                                              [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

                                                                              • imtringued · 1 days ago

                                                                                No, it wouldn't, because he didn't actually read the readme which clearly states that they are still working on passing the CPython test suite and that 5x performance is an aspirational goal, not something they accomplished yet.

                                                                                >What is explicitly not done yet — this is the active roadmap, in order:

                                                                                >CPython test suite (cpython-full): the standing grind; failures are clustered and burned down per wave.

                                                                                >Stdlib build-out: _io/os, math/struct/random, collections/itertools/json, datetime, importlib parity — each lands as a native module plus a differential corpus module.

                                                                                >Performance ratchets: tagged small-int flip, TLAB allocation, dict fast paths, float unboxing, call/attribute specialization, generator tiering — toward the ≥5× CPython geomean target (numerics ≥20×).

                                                                                >AoT parity growth toward the full corpus, plus single-binary product polish.

                                                                                >No-GIL/free-threaded runtime hardening: thread/GC/signal stress is now on the default runtime path, with remaining gaps tracked by the ratcheted suites.

                                                                                Overall the substantial parts of his comment are completely wrong and the subjective parts are not much better

                                                                                >With AI it's 100x easier to maintain than by hand.

                                                                                This is an unsubstantiated opinion. In practice AI has a limit well below 100x.

                                                                                >It reminds my on pperl. same approach using crane lift. Looks good

                                                                                The only thing I can find on the internet that mentions "pperl" is this https://metacpan.org/pod/PPerl

                                                                                >This program turns ordinary perl scripts into long running daemons, making subsequent executions extremely fast. It forks several processes for each script, allowing many proceses to call the script at once.

                                                                                Which sounds nothing like pon, which is heavily inspired by bun. Meanwhile if it's this: https://perl.petamem.com/ which took quite a while to find, then I'm wondering why that would have precedence over bun?

                                                                                Once you add the first sentence, it basically turns into a negative value comment that shouldn't have been posted.

                                                                                • anitil · 1 days ago

                                                                                  I noticed that it wasn't the best comment, I was only concerned with the tone, and I feel like dang has enough going on that we also need to help elevate the conversation. I admit there's some delicious irony in the accuser committing the same crime, but it doesn't improve the discussion to revel in that.

                                                                              • cwillu · 2 days ago

                                                                                > Reading is hard.

                                                                                The irony…

                                                                              • TZubiri · 2 days ago

                                                                                >1. It's not Python by any means, it's a subset with its own runtime, its own quirks and nuances;

                                                                                A subset of python is python. Half a tomato is still tomato

                                                                                >2. It will be impossible to maintain parity with CPython without AI assistance

                                                                                What does that even mean? If you would have said that it's impossible to update to python 3.15 of further, I'd get it.

                                                                                • geraneum · 2 days ago

                                                                                  > A subset of python is python. Half a tomato is still tomato

                                                                                  The funny thing about this is not that the first sentence is wrong, which it is. It’s the failed reductio ad absurdum.

                                                                                  • skeledrew · 2 days ago

                                                                                    > A subset of python is python. Half a tomato is still tomato

                                                                                    A subset of a calculator is still a calculator, but that subset definitely can't do everything the full version can.

                                                                                    • cwillu · 2 days ago

                                                                                      Most subsets of a physical calculator are properly called “a broken calculator”.

                                                                                      • skeledrew · 2 days ago

                                                                                        This isn't about the shell of a calculator though, but the functionality. Like if the only operations are addition and subtraction, theoretically you could derive the effects of other operations but it's extremely limiting.

                                                                                        • bunderbunder · 2 days ago

                                                                                          So yeah, half of Python might still be Turing-complete, but it wouldn’t really be Python for any practical purpose.

                                                                                          Just like how a device that can’t multiply or divide is not a 4-function calculator; it’s more like an adding machine. Many of which did multiply by serial addition.

                                                                                          • TZubiri · 1 days ago

                                                                                            If you write a program in python, say a hello world:

                                                                                            '

                                                                                            def hello_world():

                                                                                              print("hello, world")
                                                                                            
                                                                                            '

                                                                                            Is that not python? Yet it uses a subset of python?

                                                                                            That program can be run by either a python runtime, or a python subset runtime.

                                                                                            Now if you were to run a python subset program, like a hello world, you would get:

                                                                                            '

                                                                                            def hello_world():

                                                                                              print("hello, world")
                                                                                            
                                                                                            '

                                                                                            Whoah, it's the same thing.

                                                                                            Turns out every program you write with a subset of a language, is valid for the super language.

                                                                                            Subjectively also, if the subset is big enough, it feels like that language, if it uses 'def' for functions, that's python. 'I know it when I see it' kinda deal.

                                                                                            I think the confusion comes from the mathematical folk reading "subset of X is X", and implying that "subset of X=X". But this is natural language, not mathematical language, when I say that "dog is mammal", I'm not saying that "dog = mammal" I'm saying that "dog ∈ mammal", and "subset of python ∈ python"

                                                                                    • Archit3ch · 2 days ago

                                                                                      > A subset of python is python.

                                                                                      Mojo folks (rightly) disagree.

                                                                                      • leobuskin · 2 days ago

                                                                                        Mojo folks created a new language, officially called it "superset", and trying to sell to enterprise. And it's not a superset by definition, because it can't run it's "subset" (the original Python) without CPython (which was used as libcpython under the hood, iirc). It's a travesty.

                                                                                  • iLoveOncall · 2 days ago

                                                                                    Can those AI slop projects have a reserved tag on HackerNews? So many in the past few weeks I wouldn't have clicked and wasted my time on if I knew it was just some vibe-coded garbage.

                                                                                    • andy99 · 2 days ago

                                                                                      I see the same thing, and believe that ironically AI is going to bring about the return of good search engines as we’re currently drowning in slop and need a real way to filter it.

                                                                                      • ranger_danger · 2 days ago

                                                                                        How would a search engine filter that out?

                                                                                        • genewitch · 2 days ago

                                                                                          you'd need a tacit agreement that real humans who care tag and filter things for the search engine. like a webring or stumbleupon. I imagine it's easier to bolt this on to an existing product by adding "tags" and a "AI likelihood score" or something.

                                                                                          or we can bring back gopher and just not index slop sites?

                                                                                    • RantyDave · 2 days ago

                                                                                      Don't we have Nuitka for this?

                                                                                      • LtWorf · 2 days ago

                                                                                        It's not the same, that one works.

                                                                                        • TZubiri · 2 days ago

                                                                                          that compiles to C presumably, not to machine code

                                                                                        • getpokedagain · 2 days ago

                                                                                          >> The project is under heavy active development

                                                                                          Is a pretty oof sentence for a project with one contributor and no users. Just reeks of llm barf with no oversight.

                                                                                          • tclancy · 2 days ago

                                                                                            I am a fan of AI assistance, but “ratchet” is pretty much a Claude giveaway. The kids, now in their twenties because the reference is dated, might make a joke here.

                                                                                            • frollogaston · 2 days ago

                                                                                              It says ratchet so much. Yeah that's pretty ratchet. Idk what it even means for some of those usages.

                                                                                              • getpokedagain · 2 days ago

                                                                                                Oh what the fuck I can t unsee

                                                                                                • 3form · 1 days ago

                                                                                                  Ahh, AI. All ratchet and clank.

                                                                                            • drivebyhooting · 2 days ago

                                                                                              Looks like it still uses python object model. You need auto unboxing for good performance.

                                                                                              • dr_kretyn · 2 days ago

                                                                                                Awesome. Not for this repo specifically; more about the trend. More people are realizing that we have such powerful tools at our disposal and will want to do something awesome, worth while with them. Of course, many will fall off after a week, then more after a month, but some will survive. Knowledge will be spread and some will be winners through adoption. Grit can lead to knowledge, and can lead to awesome stuff.

                                                                                                • elzbardico · 2 days ago

                                                                                                  Seems to be slow as molasses compared to cpython.

                                                                                                  • bbminner · 2 days ago

                                                                                                    If AI can find new proofs for well posed math problems, i see no reason why it shouldn't be able to implement a more performant fully featured version of an existing interpreter (eg with JIT and AOT) that emulates python api well and passes all python tests and tests of other projects. It is true that a lot of human effort and thought has been put into squeezing performance out of the existing implementation. It is true that many people have found that getting that last 1% of python test suite to pass turned out to be insurmountably hard. Same is true for math, and yet AI sometimes finds simple solutions that we somehow missed. Maybe there's a simple optimization that was used in an obscure interpreter of a domain specific language that we never heard of. Worth a shot in my mind. If that turns out to be successful, we should ideally find the code that served "as an inspiration" if any.

                                                                                                    It might make more practical sense to start from CPython and try to optimize that further though. It even has a "not fully fleshed out" JIT already.

                                                                                                    • henry2023 · 2 days ago

                                                                                                      If humans can find (and have been finding for millennia) new proofs for well posted math problems, I see no reason why they shouldn’t be able to implement a more performant fully featured version of an existing interpreter.

                                                                                                      • eru · 1 days ago

                                                                                                        They can, and they have been doing so. But humans are expensive. Especially smart humans.

                                                                                                        • int_19h · 1 days ago

                                                                                                          Fable is also very expensive, unfortunately.

                                                                                                          It will be interesting to see how cheap they can make it long term.

                                                                                                          • eru · 1 days ago

                                                                                                            Well, so far any gives level of capability has started with (expensive) frontier models, but everyone else, including the cheaper models, usually quickly catches up and the frontier keeps moving forward.

                                                                                                            Fable-level capability will most likely be available for pennies soon enough.

                                                                                                    • xiaodai · 2 days ago

                                                                                                      it's been tried 10 million times. so yeah

                                                                                                      • Archit3ch · 2 days ago

                                                                                                        Surely this will succeed where $4B Modular failed!

                                                                                                        • frollogaston · 2 days ago

                                                                                                          Dynamic typing means you don't know the sizes/offsets of things beforehand. The "compiled to metal" thing still resembles a runtime more than your typical compiled code. Like naively, object would be a struct with a hashmap of property names->values since technically you can alter the keys at runtime, and many values will be pointers to other objects. Idiomatic C or Rust code will have flatter structs.

                                                                                                          Is it faster than the original interpreter? Maybe if you optimize out the primitives and certain well-known object types, unless you do some more advanced static analysis.

                                                                                                          • zoom6628 · 2 days ago

                                                                                                            Mojo not good enough?

                                                                                                            • piloto_ciego · 1 days ago

                                                                                                              Lol, all the people squawking about how this means nothing and this is a worthless project amuses me. A lot of people just don't see it yet. This is coming for literally everything and it is so exciting. The next decade is going to be awesome.

                                                                                                              • weregiraffe · 1 days ago

                                                                                                                What's so exciting about your software being made of code nobody can or wants to understand?

                                                                                                                • piloto_ciego · 1 days ago

                                                                                                                  Can you not see how amazing this is?

                                                                                                                  • weregiraffe · 1 days ago

                                                                                                                    A nuclear explosion is amazing, but I won't be excited about the nuke falling on my head.

                                                                                                                    • piloto_ciego · 1 days ago

                                                                                                                      You’re intentionally being obtuse

                                                                                                                • worldsavior · 1 days ago

                                                                                                                  You can see it cause...you're a prophet right?

                                                                                                                  • LtWorf · 1 days ago

                                                                                                                    The man's called "blind pilot".

                                                                                                                    • piloto_ciego · 1 days ago

                                                                                                                      Not a prophet at all, but can you imagine 5 years ago, thinking that this was even possible?

                                                                                                                    • imtringued · 1 days ago

                                                                                                                      Most of the value proposition of Python is that it calls into fast native modules. Compiling Python itself helps a little, but it isn't that big of a deal. The most prominent Python JITs have been a failure because of the tight coupling between CPython and native modules.

                                                                                                                      Basically the entire Python ecosystem has deep integration into implementation details of CPython, if there was a runtime independent api like HPy, then the effort would be better spent migrating to it rather than building yet another half baked JIT.

                                                                                                                      • piloto_ciego · 1 days ago

                                                                                                                        This isn’t about Python

                                                                                                                    • rcarmo · 1 days ago

                                                                                                                      Funny to see it took the same IR approach as I did with https://github.com/rcarmo/go-joker - although I did it somewhat based on the .NET IR and this seems a bit more AI-ish.