codazoda
I stopped using it back in 2004 when Patrick had health problems. It seems to be a passion project and it stopped getting updates while he recovered. There is a community behind it but it may mainly be driven forward by him.
It looks like it's fairly slow to get updates, generally, as the last release was Slackware 15 in 2022. Maybe that reflects it's dictator (his word not mine) or maybe it reflects it's stability.
Yet, despite all that, Slackware got this security fix around 10 days ago.
That’s not always the case, I know that small trucks like plumbing supply houses, hardware stores, and sod companies will pull the pallet from the truck for you, but I would guess that isn’t typically for your average 18-wheeler.
It’s good fun building for retro-like machines.
I took it to 39% complete, as a language, over 8-weeks. Then, I spent just 50 minutes describing all the missing parts and it finished the language in 1-shot. I didn’t think it would work. It did.
I used Opus 5.5 on a $20 plan and I didn’t even hit my limits.
As someone else said, there is no chapter 2.
My own guess is that it was a response to some type of long-term abuse.
I can't even find a mailing list to sign up for. But I'd read the rest of this.
I created a similar alternative, Neat CSS, a while back. I use it for tons of projects. It could probably use a fresh look from me to see if there's anything I want to update but it's been a stable "framework" for me. I didn't intend it to be classless, though it's mostly semantic, but I instead focused on keeping it small and tight. It's only 3KB.
Anyway, thought I'd share it here too.
My first project is a watch made from an ESP32-S3 with an AMOLED made by Waveshare.
A traveling clock could make a really interesting second project and, because it could plug in, a slightly less challenging one.
Or so the story goes.
The first one runs on an ESP32 that I plan to use as a watch. The software works, I just need to finish the 3D printed case.
The second runs on an RP2350 connected to my living room TV via an HDMI cord.
I have so much appreciation for these old machines I grew up with.
BASIC32
Ready.I can think of one other possibility. It's easier to write in a wiki via the browser. I can open that on my phone and edit docs. I can open it in my browser and edit docs.
On desktop it's a tiny bit more to pull the repo and open it in your editor (and you might already be there) but that tiny bit can be enough to stop you from writing documentation. For me, writing documentation must be totally painless so that I'll actually do it.
Why am I not a fan of the add-ons like PR's, wiki's, discussions, projects, and issues? Because they each introduce vendor lock-in to varying degrees.
I’ve built two (successful) iterations and am now working on the third. They are all very minimal.
The main one works well and runs full time waiting for my next idea. The second targeted an open weights model and worked in limited cases.
Now I’m working on a more autonomous version. I give it only a goal and a strategy, it decides its own projects.
https://joeldare.com/creating-a-minimal-dark-factory
So far I’ve created a couple simple web based games and a BASIC32 interpreter that boots on an ESP32 and turns it into a 1980’s style computer.
For my personal stuff, I'm on a small $20 plan, so I need to use tokens conservatively. I was very rarely exceeding limits until I built a Dark Software Factory. It's not as efficient at token use. So, I use Sonnit over Opus here.
At work I have a $100 plan that I rarely exceed so I use Opus. I have access to Fable too, and I did use it a lot while it was new, but I don't find it improves most of my work by too much. I do mostly bug fixing across several hundred repositories with hundreds of thousands of lines of code, mostly written by humans over the past 20-years. These projects interact with each other so I run claude from the root of my sandbox (I was nervous to try this but I'm not looking back now).
I also use Sol as a secondary for my personal work. I pay for it because I like to talk to ChatGPT on the web. Since I already have the subscription, I let Sol write plans for me. It does a better job at certain tasks and it saves me some Claude tokens. Maybe I should consider Terra for the task, but I don't run up against my usage limits for the little bit I use it.
I'm trying to use Gemma 4 12b for some workloads but I haven't mastered the model yet. It's still very experimental for me. I can get work from it but it takes a lot of hand-holding. For local models, however, it's all I have the RAM for.
Just an hour ago I made my most recent pen plotter generative art free on my website. I plan to send high resolution scans to everyone who joins my mailing list so you can print them at home.
In contrast with the author, I actually enjoy creating code with LLM’s. I’ve been on the technical management track, instead of boots on the ground coding, for quite a few years now. LLMs are letting me produce software again with limited time.
I still enjoy writing code by hand too and my generative art work is mostly that.
On the game side, I recently created a Shut the Box game that runs in the web browser. This was created entirely by an LLM. In fact, it was the test project for a Dark Software Factory I’ve built.
I love that I can describe a project, from my phone, put it away, and have a prototype built a few minutes later.
The game is clearly unique and consistent with my own personal style. And, I’m enjoying playing it.
What I did was create a game with an action button. Then I served ads right next to the action button. I didn’t realize people would miss click on the ads at a high rate, but they did. They fat fingered it, clicked the ad, I got paid.
I looked into it after a couple weeks because my click rate was crazy high.
Yesterday I did have success with Gemma-4-12b with 128k context. It fits in my RAM and it's relatively fast on my hardware.
I had to give it prompts that are quite a bit different from the way I use foundation models, but I did get it to work quite well. I feel like I could learn it's differences and get good at using it for real work.
https://joeldare.com/a-local-open-weight-model-builds-its-fi...
EDIT: Or, maybe it's just token pricing, but $10 is the minimum? Maybe it's that.
I'm also aware that they have overlap in some areas on data centers.