5 ms·

Real, genuinely confused human here: Can someone please clarify whether or not gas town is/was a joke? I've searched repeatedly and can't find anything that loo

by ohazi 9mo ago

Real, genuinely confused human here: Can someone please clarify whether or not gas town is/was a joke? I've searched repeatedly and can't find anything that looks like an obvious tell, and I'm not sure if this is because it's actually real and people are taking it seriously, or because the pages and pages of discourse surrounding it is AI generated and taking itself literally. If it's not a joke... I have no words. You've all gone insane.

0xbadcafebee 9mo ago
It's a real open source tool Yegge has built and been using for a while now. And no, it's not insane, he's literally written a book with Gene Kim about the fundamental lessons that go into it, and he's been on lots of podcasts where he explains more. I expect major companies will soon be NIH-ing their own version of it. Even bleeding tokens as it does, the cost is less than an engineer, and produces working software much faster. The more it can be made to scale, the more incentive there is. A competitive business can't justify not using a system like this.
- PKop 9mo ago
  Where is the working software it produces? Do you have a repo you've made with it as an example?
  - Kostchei 9mo ago
    yeh the repo is Gas Town
astrange 9mo ago
It doesn't have to exclusively be one or the other. > If it's not a joke... I have no words. You've all gone insane. I think this is covered by the part in Yegge's post where he says not to run it unless you're so rich you don't care if it works or not.
- chrisjj 9mo ago
  How rich do you have to be not care about the environmental cost?
  - astrange 9mo ago
    That's an Internet meme and not a real issue.
    - Retr0id 9mo ago
      It might be an internet meme when you're talking about the odd chatgpt free tier query, but burning through tokens at the rate of gas town can probably saturate a rack worth of GPU.
  - nl 9mo ago
    I think Andrew Ng wrote a great piece on this. For example, in the US, which do you think uses more water: Golf Courses or Data Centers? a) Gold Courses use twice as much water as Data Centers b) About the same c) Data Centers use twice as much water as Gold Courses The answer is "None of the above": "Golf courses in the U.S. use around 500 billion gallons annually of water to irrigate their turf [snip] data centers consume [snip] 17 billion gallons, or maybe around 10x that if we include water use from energy generation" Do you think a Google search or a Gemini query produces more carbon? > Google had estimated that a single web search query produces 0.2 grams of CO2 emissions. [snip] the median Gemini LLM app query produces a surprisingly low 0.03 grams of CO2 emissions), and uses less energy than watching 9 seconds of television https://www.deeplearning.ai/the-batch/issue-336/ https://www.deeplearning.ai/the-batch/issue-336/
    - chrisjj 9mo ago
      ... computation produces dramatically less carbon than alternatives. Google had estimated that a single web search query produces 0.2 grams of CO2 emissions. In contrast, driving from my home to the local library to look up a fact would generate about 400 grams So, how much less carbon is produced by a Gas Town run than the equivalent number of drives to the library? /i
danpalmer 9mo ago
It's not a joke, but I think it's an example of the same thing we're seeing with folks who think they're talking to god when they talk to ChatGPT, or those who spiral and in some cases, sadly take their own life. These chatbots create an echo chamber unlike that which we've ever had to deal with before. If we thought social media was bad, this is way worse. I think Gastown and Beads are examples of this applied to software engineering. Good software is built with input from others. I've seen many junior engineers go off and spend weeks building the wrong thing, and it's a mess, but we learn to get input, we learn to have our ideas critiqued. LLMs give us the illusion of pair programming, of working with a team, but they're not. LLMs vastly accelerate the rate at which you can spiral spiral down the wrong path, or down a path that doesn't even make sense. Gastown and Beads are that. They're fever dreams. They work, somewhat, but even just a little bit of oversight, critique, input from others, would have made them far better.
- nonethewiser 9mo ago
  It's a double edged sword. If it can lead the uninformed down the wrong path faster, it can lead the informed down the right path faster. It's not only fast in one direction.
  - bwestergard 9mo ago
    I believe the author of gas town is very informed, having been a professional software developer for some time. And the premise of the above comment is that he did, despite this, go down the wrong path.
    - nonethewiser 9mo ago
      The informed and uninformed are not mutually exclusive groups. Everyone is one and then the other depending on the time. To varying degrees of course.
  - pcthrowaway 9mo ago
    The difference between light-up arrows pointing the way "forward" for a car turning onto the expressway the wrong way, and doing so with the possibility humans might see and attempt to flag them down before they're too far to turn around. People will make mistakes, and AI holding their hand and guiding them while they do it can have disastrous consequences. But it's nice that the arrows will appear to also guide people going the right way I guess.
pjm331 9mo ago
Gas town is the cackling mad laughter emitting from someone who knows they are being both insane and prescient simultaneously. Today, it is insane. But I fully expect to be hearing about a very serious thing in the near future about which people will say “gas town was an early attempt at this”
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- jcims 9mo ago
  This is the best take I've seen in here. I've been tinkering with it for the past two days. It's a very real system for coordinating work between a plurality of humans and agents. Someone likened it to kubernetes in that it's a complex system that is going to necessitate a lot of invention and opinions, the fact that it *looks* like a meme is immaterial, and might be an effort to avoid people taking it too seriously. Who knows where it ends up, but we will see more of this and whatever it is will have lessons learned from Gas Town in it.
  - dunk010 9mo ago
    I've had to read so far down to get a single non-stupid, ignorant, or inflammatory comment. What's wrong with HN, jeepers. Some actual discussion of the thing itself and not just pearl clutching would be appropriate here.
AlexCoventry 9mo ago
No, not a joke. The author also co-vibe-coded a book, called Vibe Coding, describing and recommending exactly the sort of system he's trying to build as Gas Town.
Quarrelsome 9mo ago
> If it's not a joke... I have no words. You've all gone insane. How is it insane to jump to the logical conclusion of all of this? The article was full of warnings, its not a sensible thing to do but its a cool thing to do. We might ask whether or not it works, but does that actually matter? It read as an experiment using experimental software doing experimental things. Consider a deterministic life form looking at how we program software today, that might look insane to it and gastown might look considerably more sane. Everything that ever happens in human creation begins as a thought, then as a prototype before it becomes adopted and maybe (if it works/scales) something we eventually take for granted. I mean I hate it but maybe I've misunderstood my profession when I thought this job was being able to prove the correctness of the system that we release. Maybe the business side of the org was never actually interested in that in the first place. Dev and business have been misaligned with competing interests for decades. Maybe this is actually the fit. Give greater control of software engineering to people higher up the org chart. Maybe this is how we actually sink c-suite and let their ideas crash against the rocks forcing c-suite to eventually become extremely technical to be able to harness this. Instead of today's reality where c-suite gorge on the majority of the profit with an extremely loosely coupled feedback loop where its incredibly difficult to square cause and effect. Stock went up on Tuesday afternoon did it? I deserve eleventy million dollars for that. I just find it odd to crap on gastown when I think our status quo is kinda insane too.
Retr0id 9mo ago
It's kinda like how edgy political takes are often wrapped in seven layers of meta-irony. If the audience reaction is negative you can say it was just a joke that didn't land. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, if it allows exploring new ideas with relative safety. I think that's what's going on here. It's a crazy idea that might just work, but if it doesn't work it can be retconned as satirical performance art.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]

by ohazi 9mo ago

0xbadcafebee 9mo ago

It's a real open source tool Yegge has built and been using for a while now. And no, it's not insane, he's literally written a book with Gene Kim about the fundamental lessons that go into it, and he's been on lots of podcasts where he explains more. I expect major companies will soon be NIH-ing their own version of it. Even bleeding tokens as it does, the cost is less than an engineer, and produces working software much faster. The more it can be made to scale, the more incentive there is. A competitive business can't justify not using a system like this.

PKop 9mo ago
Where is the working software it produces? Do you have a repo you've made with it as an example?
- Kostchei 9mo ago
  yeh the repo is Gas Town

astrange 9mo ago

It doesn't have to exclusively be one or the other. > If it's not a joke... I have no words. You've all gone insane. I think this is covered by the part in Yegge's post where he says not to run it unless you're so rich you don't care if it works or not.

chrisjj 9mo ago
How rich do you have to be not care about the environmental cost?
- astrange 9mo ago
  That's an Internet meme and not a real issue.
  - Retr0id 9mo ago
    It might be an internet meme when you're talking about the odd chatgpt free tier query, but burning through tokens at the rate of gas town can probably saturate a rack worth of GPU.
- nl 9mo ago
  I think Andrew Ng wrote a great piece on this. For example, in the US, which do you think uses more water: Golf Courses or Data Centers? a) Gold Courses use twice as much water as Data Centers b) About the same c) Data Centers use twice as much water as Gold Courses The answer is "None of the above": "Golf courses in the U.S. use around 500 billion gallons annually of water to irrigate their turf [snip] data centers consume [snip] 17 billion gallons, or maybe around 10x that if we include water use from energy generation" Do you think a Google search or a Gemini query produces more carbon? > Google had estimated that a single web search query produces 0.2 grams of CO2 emissions. [snip] the median Gemini LLM app query produces a surprisingly low 0.03 grams of CO2 emissions), and uses less energy than watching 9 seconds of television https://www.deeplearning.ai/the-batch/issue-336/ https://www.deeplearning.ai/the-batch/issue-336/
  - chrisjj 9mo ago
    ... computation produces dramatically less carbon than alternatives. Google had estimated that a single web search query produces 0.2 grams of CO2 emissions. In contrast, driving from my home to the local library to look up a fact would generate about 400 grams So, how much less carbon is produced by a Gas Town run than the equivalent number of drives to the library? /i

danpalmer 9mo ago

It's not a joke, but I think it's an example of the same thing we're seeing with folks who think they're talking to god when they talk to ChatGPT, or those who spiral and in some cases, sadly take their own life. These chatbots create an echo chamber unlike that which we've ever had to deal with before. If we thought social media was bad, this is way worse. I think Gastown and Beads are examples of this applied to software engineering. Good software is built with input from others. I've seen many junior engineers go off and spend weeks building the wrong thing, and it's a mess, but we learn to get input, we learn to have our ideas critiqued. LLMs give us the illusion of pair programming, of working with a team, but they're not. LLMs vastly accelerate the rate at which you can spiral spiral down the wrong path, or down a path that doesn't even make sense. Gastown and Beads are that. They're fever dreams. They work, somewhat, but even just a little bit of oversight, critique, input from others, would have made them far better.

nonethewiser 9mo ago
It's a double edged sword. If it can lead the uninformed down the wrong path faster, it can lead the informed down the right path faster. It's not only fast in one direction.
- bwestergard 9mo ago
  I believe the author of gas town is very informed, having been a professional software developer for some time. And the premise of the above comment is that he did, despite this, go down the wrong path.
  - nonethewiser 9mo ago
    The informed and uninformed are not mutually exclusive groups. Everyone is one and then the other depending on the time. To varying degrees of course.
- pcthrowaway 9mo ago
  The difference between light-up arrows pointing the way "forward" for a car turning onto the expressway the wrong way, and doing so with the possibility humans might see and attempt to flag them down before they're too far to turn around. People will make mistakes, and AI holding their hand and guiding them while they do it can have disastrous consequences. But it's nice that the arrows will appear to also guide people going the right way I guess.

pjm331 9mo ago

Gas town is the cackling mad laughter emitting from someone who knows they are being both insane and prescient simultaneously. Today, it is insane. But I fully expect to be hearing about a very serious thing in the near future about which people will say “gas town was an early attempt at this”

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
jcims 9mo ago
This is the best take I've seen in here. I've been tinkering with it for the past two days. It's a very real system for coordinating work between a plurality of humans and agents. Someone likened it to kubernetes in that it's a complex system that is going to necessitate a lot of invention and opinions, the fact that it *looks* like a meme is immaterial, and might be an effort to avoid people taking it too seriously. Who knows where it ends up, but we will see more of this and whatever it is will have lessons learned from Gas Town in it.
- dunk010 9mo ago
  I've had to read so far down to get a single non-stupid, ignorant, or inflammatory comment. What's wrong with HN, jeepers. Some actual discussion of the thing itself and not just pearl clutching would be appropriate here.

AlexCoventry 9mo ago

No, not a joke. The author also co-vibe-coded a book, called Vibe Coding, describing and recommending exactly the sort of system he's trying to build as Gas Town.

Quarrelsome 9mo ago

> If it's not a joke... I have no words. You've all gone insane. How is it insane to jump to the logical conclusion of all of this? The article was full of warnings, its not a sensible thing to do but its a cool thing to do. We might ask whether or not it works, but does that actually matter? It read as an experiment using experimental software doing experimental things. Consider a deterministic life form looking at how we program software today, that might look insane to it and gastown might look considerably more sane. Everything that ever happens in human creation begins as a thought, then as a prototype before it becomes adopted and maybe (if it works/scales) something we eventually take for granted. I mean I hate it but maybe I've misunderstood my profession when I thought this job was being able to prove the correctness of the system that we release. Maybe the business side of the org was never actually interested in that in the first place. Dev and business have been misaligned with competing interests for decades. Maybe this is actually the fit. Give greater control of software engineering to people higher up the org chart. Maybe this is how we actually sink c-suite and let their ideas crash against the rocks forcing c-suite to eventually become extremely technical to be able to harness this. Instead of today's reality where c-suite gorge on the majority of the profit with an extremely loosely coupled feedback loop where its incredibly difficult to square cause and effect. Stock went up on Tuesday afternoon did it? I deserve eleventy million dollars for that. I just find it odd to crap on gastown when I think our status quo is kinda insane too.

Retr0id 9mo ago

It's kinda like how edgy political takes are often wrapped in seven layers of meta-irony. If the audience reaction is negative you can say it was just a joke that didn't land. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, if it allows exploring new ideas with relative safety. I think that's what's going on here. It's a crazy idea that might just work, but if it doesn't work it can be retconned as satirical performance art.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]