Python 3.14 compiled to metal – no interpreter

80 pointsposted 3 hours ago
by hamza_q_

45 Comments

leobuskin

2 hours 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

an hour ago

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

leobuskin

an hour 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

an hour 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

an hour ago

It's like we invented a worse github.

dotancohen

30 minutes ago

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

zahlman

an hour ago

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

minimaxir

an hour ago

Why?

all2

an hour 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.

bt1a

an hour ago

A memory of theirs. Trying to use some heavily quantized gpt-3 era toddler to assist the development of a project. Maybe. A blind posit. Yea

chomp

an hour ago

I don’t want to be mean, but try to run a large project and you’ll realize there’s more to it than “can I find some bodies to crank out code”

bt1a

an hour ago

it will be impossible to maintain parity with wetware

up2isomorphism

15 minutes ago

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

rurban

an hour 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

leobuskin

an hour ago

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

dr_kretyn

4 minutes 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.

getpokedagain

an hour 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

35 minutes 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.

drivebyhooting

19 minutes ago

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

ubercore

2 hours 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.

himata4113

2 hours ago

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

roger_

17 minutes ago

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

throwaway27448

an hour ago

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

baq

2 hours ago

of course it is vibed.

it doesn't matter as long as it works.

ActionHank

2 hours 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

an hour 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

17 minutes 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.

kameit00

2 hours ago

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

ttul

9 minutes ago

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

mcphage

2 hours 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

an hour 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.

cuzezzzbbfofai

2 hours ago

Can it run Numpy and Torch?

smithza

an hour 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

an hour 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.

RantyDave

an hour ago

Don't we have Nuitka for this?

LtWorf

32 minutes ago

It's not the same, that one works.

echoangle

2 hours ago

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

smithza

an hour ago

this as well as pickle files will likely be unavailable

westurner

2 hours ago

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

iLoveOncall

an hour 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

an hour 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.