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Comment by utopiah | Hacker News Reader

I called it "software".

It's so strange to me that since the 1960s with BASIC then later on dozens of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_educational_programmin... including Logo by Feurzeig/Papert/Solomon there is effort to precisely help beginners program software.

The effort was not to onboard future professional software developers but rather to make the personal in personal computer, or PC, meaningful. It's YOUR computer, you can put YOUR software on it. In fact even pocket calculator do that.

We keep on re-discovering the foundations.

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To me this doesn't seem like a step towards those foundations, but another layer of of loss of agency. You can run "a" model locally, but you cannot make it locally (at least not for the purpose of just talking software into existence). You need to slurp up all the internet first, so to speak. And even if you could do that, you still depend on people putting new things onto the internet for you to slurp up. So is it really my software? What if it breaks or I want a new feature and AI corp nuked my account? How much did I learn during my time having it done for me?

And before anyone mentions it, I don't think the fact that I need a compiler and a manual and some example software to learn from is quite on the same level. I might be wrong but I would need some convincing.

You can also run a computer at home but you cannot even make a 486 from scratch at home, let alone something released more recently.

I agree on the SaaS side of the story, that's why it is so important to have open models.

Agreed, I wasn't advocating on using LLMs, even "open" or "local" ones.

i think "self-hosted", "home" or "company"/"office" should be the term we use, instead of "local", since

1. every LLM is _local_ in relation to the location the storage and/or the computers hosting/using it

2. the LLM running in your home is only _local_, until u step out of the door, but if you have some tailscale or zerotier VPN setup, u can still access it _remote_ly...

How does any of that impact a user who just has a specific task they want to accomplish and who doesn't have a CS degree?

Is it "their" software? Sure, if it meets their needs. What if the AI changes? Who cares, I already have the software. All the what ifs are solved by taking the current code, stuffing into into any AI you like today, and getting the new version.

As a user, this all sounds like a great deal. Devs can continue wringing their hands over code quality and long term support and architecture and preferred framework, meanwhile the user who had an itch got it scratched and didn't need nor care about any of those things.

> What if the AI changes? Who cares, I already have the software. All the what ifs are solved by taking the current code, stuffing into into any AI you like today, and getting the new version.

It's just dismissing the question. If the AI changes, just use one that didn't change. If it gets 1000x more expensive, just use one that remains cheap.

Apart from the fact that without new input to learn from, things will probably stagnate in new exciting ways, on top of the stagnation, bloat and slop we worked so hard to make a culture over the last decades.

> Devs can continue wringing their hands over code quality and long term support and architecture and preferred framework

I mentioned none of those things.

> the user who had an itch got it scratched and didn't need nor care about any of those things.

And I don't care about that user when it comes to the question of my agency and autonomy. It's like people discussing how to make cats do tricks and someone going "just get a dog".

> It's YOUR computer, you can put YOUR software on it. In fact even pocket calculator do that.

I'm pretty sure this exists. It's called OSS or, more ubiquitously, Linux.

The problem is, of course, no one wants to publish software for your PC/handmade OS. Which makes it a huge problem. You can't write every piece of your OS, without wasting huge amount of time. Nor do people generally want this.

OSS/Linux is "our" software. It's made by us for us (or others if you don't contribute).

Your software can be made by you, for you. It can be open source/free software if you want. Others can contribute to it, if you want but it can be open source without accepting external contributions also.

My point was to highlight that having software made by you for your machine is not new. Arguably the way to do so changed but I would say the principle remains.

> OSS/Linux is "our" software. It's made by us for us

If by "us" you mean big bucks corporations, then yes: ~80% is big corporations [0]. Unfortunately, it does not look like it's a personal OS.

And we badly need the personal platform with the personal OS.

0 - https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/za564c/is_i...

It would be bad if there weren't a significant number of companies paying for work on Linux to continue, because so many of them are benefiting from it, and at least some of them realize that ensuring sustainability into the future is a good idea and worth investing a salary or two. (As in, paying some of their employees to work on Linux).

Don't fall into the trap of assuming "A big company did it / paid for it to be done, therefore it must be bad". I see that mindset (which I'll call anti-corporatist) on HN from time to time. Companies are made up of people, and it's the people that make the decisions. Some people are good-natured, some are greedy and grasping. And the company that acted one way one decade can turn around and act completely differently the next decade, because a different person was at the helm.

Fundamentally, it's about the people, not the companies. The anti-corporatist mindset is prone to forgetting that.

Random number from a Reddit thread isn't a great source but even then I agree with some of the comments, it might even be 99% nowadays.

The question is what does it change? Are the contributions from those corporations irreversible or are they targeting their own products for e.g. virtualization for cloud computing which doesn't affect the typical personal OS user?

Anyway the kernel itself was still started by a random student in his dorm. GNU was just started by another student. That possibility still exists today. It's also possible to trim that kernel with e.g. Linux-libre or even run Hurd.

One can use Debian with KDE today and see nor be subject to any corporate impact in terms of arbitrary limits to their usage. If they decide to not personalize it more it is most likely because they didn't consider it, not because they can't.

> Your software can be made by you, for you.

Yeah, but it's probably derived from OSS software anyway either via license or LLM. That said, you can customize your Linux/BSD/Haiku/TempleOS as much as you want.

But consider the following: even in the better case of an OS making 1% of OS userbase (vs. 0.0000001%) no one wants to support it.

Want to play Diablo? Better to sit down and waste your time.

That's the beauty of containers, virtual machines like QEMU or compatibility layers like Wine/Proton. As long as your super esoteric software implements the interfaces those rely on, you are able to run everything else.

No one will support Windows if no one uses it either.

With the current situation on the hardware market, it makes me sad the we discover it only now. If things continue the way they are, there will be no Personal Computer any longer.

Ah well don't despair there are already alternatives e.g. https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/reform

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