3 ms·

Serious question - there's a lot of fluff talking about Gas Town, but has Gas Town shipping something in public that can be evaluated without all of this surrou

Serious question - there's a lot of fluff talking about Gas Town, but has Gas Town shipping something in public that can be evaluated without all of this surrounding hype and blogposting? At this point it should be clear that Gas Town has done something we can evaluate the value of.

rsanheim 6mo ago
> has Gas Town shipping something in public that can be evaluated without all of this surrounding hype and blogposting? No.
rbtprograms 6mo ago
you can always fire it up yourself and see what its all about. in my experience it generates a lot of code very quickly, that code is probably only ever supposed to be LLM maintained, not by people.
- blahblaher 6mo ago
  I don't think the op meant Gas Town itself (if they did, my bad), but what has Yegge done with Gas Town? By now it should have released some amazing thing if Gas Town increases productivity so much.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  - shermantanktop 6mo ago
    What has Yegge done with Gas Town? Well for one, he has posted a bunch of blog content about it which has generated chatter like this and increased his geek mindshare. Just because he's operating in the realm of smart nerds doesn't mean he is immune to the value-inverting effects of social media.
    - coldtea 6mo ago
      >doesn't mean he is immune to the value-inverting effects of social media. Or those of hype, e.g. AI hype.
    - erelong 6mo ago
      He's now tried to create a board of a bunch of Gas Towns called "The Wasteland": https://wasteland.gastownhall.ai/ https://wasteland.gastownhall.ai/ (btw I've been wondering the same thing as you and am not sure if there's another answer besides that he and people following his projects keep building projects on their projects: Beads, to Gas Town, to Wasteland, etc.)
    - WickyNilliams 6mo ago
      Don't forget: also using his name and the project to pump some speculative crypto nonsense of which he was a beneficiary. How anybody takes him (or the Ralph Wiggum guy who did the same) seriously after this is beyond me. These people should be exiled
  - panzagl 6mo ago
    I think the main thing he's produced using Gas Town is Gas Town itself.
- root_axis 6mo ago
  > you can always fire it up yourself and see what its all about I imagine it doesn't run very cheaply.
  - ithkuil 6mo ago
    Name checks out
- drekipus 6mo ago
  > that code is probably only ever supposed to be LLM maintained, not by people. But LLMs are trying to mimic people. So if confusion is the human response, what's to stop the llm from acting confused?
  - throw1234567891 6mo ago
    A mechanical ability to look at the code without having a judgement.
- throwaway613746 6mo ago
  [dead]
dist-epoch 6mo ago
> Having spent six weeks or so using Gas Town across multiple simultaneous projects, I believe I can describe the shift concretely. The bottleneck migrates from coding speed to the rate at which you can generate ideas, write specifications, and validate outputs. You are no longer limited by how fast you can build. You are limited by how fast you can think. Interesting: > Kubernetes asks “Is it running?” Gas Town asks “Is it done?” Kubernetes optimizes for uptime. Gas Town optimizes for completion. https://embracingenigmas.substack.com/p/exploring-gas-town https://embracingenigmas.substack.com/p/exploring-gas-town
- Zafira 6mo ago
  I’m not sure I find the testimony of a Bain & Company AI consultant (https://www.bain.com/our-team/eric-koziol/ https://www.bain.com/our-team/eric-koziol/) to be compelling for anything outside of generating fees.
  - dist-epoch 6mo ago
    Does this mean you would avoid an article on PostgreSQL if it's from a company selling Postgres products or consultation?
    - Leszek 6mo ago
      It means they'd avoid an article on the benefits of smoking if it's posted by a company selling cigarettes.
- mtlynch 6mo ago
  This seems to be an AI-generated post where the "author" never reveals building any successful product or even tangible project with Gas Town.
  - joezydeco 6mo ago
    It's like Web 4.0 zombo.com
_pdp_ 6mo ago
If the post does not have any use-cases proving value then perhaps this is something yet to be validated, i.e. the burden on the users, not the creators.
- IncreasePosts 6mo ago
  Corollary: if the post does have use-cases providing value, this is something yet to be validated and the value is just imagine by the author
- RugnirViking 6mo ago
  In an era where creating such libraries is much cheaper than validating that they're useful or work, yeah you really should validate it before you expect someone to use it. Nobody is going around trying out every slop project they see, they'd be wasting hours and hours for no gain at all. This all being said, I do find the idea interesting, but heeded it's advice when it said it's hideously expensive and risky to use. So yes, I do want someone braver, richer, and stupider than me to take the first leap
- en-tro-py 6mo ago
  Why would the onus on the value prop be on the user? There should be no shortage of examples the creator could provide, unless of course...
  - phist_mcgee 6mo ago
    You're prompting it wrong!
- slopinthebag 6mo ago
  Wym? I can slop out 100 libraries/frameworks/packages/cli's a day, the onus is not on other people to prove that they are useful.
  - pitched 6mo ago
    You’re very good at this! I have trouble slopping out more than a day or two! Treat this like art. There are some neat ideas, maybe not executed particularly well. Somewhere around 7/10 IMDB score. The working implementation makes the blog post more impactful more than the other way around.
nojito 6mo ago
>Gas Town shipping something in public that can be evaluated without all of this surrounding hype and blogposting? I am very confident in saying that most individuals successfully using multiple agents have done so by building their own harness.
- BowBun 6mo ago
  This is my experience as well. At work, our team is 50/50 on 'mastery' of current AI tools. All of us using parallel agentic workflows have our own flavor of tooling. I'm not convinced there's an agreement yet on what the 'ideal' is here, so experimentation is where it's at. Over-indexing on a massively complex system like Gastown for professional work seems unwise. Lots of us have used it for fun at home though.
jcims 6mo ago
>At this point it should be clear that Gas Town has done something we can evaluate the value of. I see this sentiment often, repeated a couple times in here, but I don't understand why on earth that would be the case. Gas Town was released a little over three months ago. It's an ongoing open-source experiment at the bleeding edge of vendor-agnostic multi-agent orchestration. I was using gastown for fire-and-forget prototyping of larger projects. It was flaky and scorches tokens but it was able to get larger prototypes done than I could with a single instance of my daily river (claude) alone.
- AyyEye 6mo ago
  > Gas Town was released a little over three months ago Should be plenty of time for a 100x zero-shot vibe god.

rsanheim 6mo ago

> has Gas Town shipping something in public that can be evaluated without all of this surrounding hype and blogposting? No.

rbtprograms 6mo ago

you can always fire it up yourself and see what its all about. in my experience it generates a lot of code very quickly, that code is probably only ever supposed to be LLM maintained, not by people.

blahblaher 6mo ago
I don't think the op meant Gas Town itself (if they did, my bad), but what has Yegge done with Gas Town? By now it should have released some amazing thing if Gas Town increases productivity so much.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- shermantanktop 6mo ago
  What has Yegge done with Gas Town? Well for one, he has posted a bunch of blog content about it which has generated chatter like this and increased his geek mindshare. Just because he's operating in the realm of smart nerds doesn't mean he is immune to the value-inverting effects of social media.
  - coldtea 6mo ago
    >doesn't mean he is immune to the value-inverting effects of social media. Or those of hype, e.g. AI hype.
  - erelong 6mo ago
    He's now tried to create a board of a bunch of Gas Towns called "The Wasteland": https://wasteland.gastownhall.ai/ https://wasteland.gastownhall.ai/ (btw I've been wondering the same thing as you and am not sure if there's another answer besides that he and people following his projects keep building projects on their projects: Beads, to Gas Town, to Wasteland, etc.)
  - WickyNilliams 6mo ago
    Don't forget: also using his name and the project to pump some speculative crypto nonsense of which he was a beneficiary. How anybody takes him (or the Ralph Wiggum guy who did the same) seriously after this is beyond me. These people should be exiled
- panzagl 6mo ago
  I think the main thing he's produced using Gas Town is Gas Town itself.
root_axis 6mo ago
> you can always fire it up yourself and see what its all about I imagine it doesn't run very cheaply.
- ithkuil 6mo ago
  Name checks out
drekipus 6mo ago
> that code is probably only ever supposed to be LLM maintained, not by people. But LLMs are trying to mimic people. So if confusion is the human response, what's to stop the llm from acting confused?
- throw1234567891 6mo ago
  A mechanical ability to look at the code without having a judgement.
throwaway613746 6mo ago
[dead]

dist-epoch 6mo ago

> Having spent six weeks or so using Gas Town across multiple simultaneous projects, I believe I can describe the shift concretely. The bottleneck migrates from coding speed to the rate at which you can generate ideas, write specifications, and validate outputs. You are no longer limited by how fast you can build. You are limited by how fast you can think. Interesting: > Kubernetes asks “Is it running?” Gas Town asks “Is it done?” Kubernetes optimizes for uptime. Gas Town optimizes for completion. https://embracingenigmas.substack.com/p/exploring-gas-town https://embracingenigmas.substack.com/p/exploring-gas-town

Zafira 6mo ago
I’m not sure I find the testimony of a Bain & Company AI consultant (https://www.bain.com/our-team/eric-koziol/ https://www.bain.com/our-team/eric-koziol/) to be compelling for anything outside of generating fees.
- dist-epoch 6mo ago
  Does this mean you would avoid an article on PostgreSQL if it's from a company selling Postgres products or consultation?
  - Leszek 6mo ago
    It means they'd avoid an article on the benefits of smoking if it's posted by a company selling cigarettes.
mtlynch 6mo ago
This seems to be an AI-generated post where the "author" never reveals building any successful product or even tangible project with Gas Town.
- joezydeco 6mo ago
  It's like Web 4.0 zombo.com

_pdp_ 6mo ago

If the post does not have any use-cases proving value then perhaps this is something yet to be validated, i.e. the burden on the users, not the creators.

IncreasePosts 6mo ago
Corollary: if the post does have use-cases providing value, this is something yet to be validated and the value is just imagine by the author
RugnirViking 6mo ago
In an era where creating such libraries is much cheaper than validating that they're useful or work, yeah you really should validate it before you expect someone to use it. Nobody is going around trying out every slop project they see, they'd be wasting hours and hours for no gain at all. This all being said, I do find the idea interesting, but heeded it's advice when it said it's hideously expensive and risky to use. So yes, I do want someone braver, richer, and stupider than me to take the first leap
en-tro-py 6mo ago
Why would the onus on the value prop be on the user? There should be no shortage of examples the creator could provide, unless of course...
- phist_mcgee 6mo ago
  You're prompting it wrong!
slopinthebag 6mo ago
Wym? I can slop out 100 libraries/frameworks/packages/cli's a day, the onus is not on other people to prove that they are useful.
- pitched 6mo ago
  You’re very good at this! I have trouble slopping out more than a day or two! Treat this like art. There are some neat ideas, maybe not executed particularly well. Somewhere around 7/10 IMDB score. The working implementation makes the blog post more impactful more than the other way around.

nojito 6mo ago

>Gas Town shipping something in public that can be evaluated without all of this surrounding hype and blogposting? I am very confident in saying that most individuals successfully using multiple agents have done so by building their own harness.

BowBun 6mo ago
This is my experience as well. At work, our team is 50/50 on 'mastery' of current AI tools. All of us using parallel agentic workflows have our own flavor of tooling. I'm not convinced there's an agreement yet on what the 'ideal' is here, so experimentation is where it's at. Over-indexing on a massively complex system like Gastown for professional work seems unwise. Lots of us have used it for fun at home though.

jcims 6mo ago

>At this point it should be clear that Gas Town has done something we can evaluate the value of. I see this sentiment often, repeated a couple times in here, but I don't understand why on earth that would be the case. Gas Town was released a little over three months ago. It's an ongoing open-source experiment at the bleeding edge of vendor-agnostic multi-agent orchestration. I was using gastown for fire-and-forget prototyping of larger projects. It was flaky and scorches tokens but it was able to get larger prototypes done than I could with a single instance of my daily river (claude) alone.

AyyEye 6mo ago
> Gas Town was released a little over three months ago Should be plenty of time for a 100x zero-shot vibe god.