The past few years have taught me that these are the people that rise to the top of society (much to my chagrin).
The average person doesn’t want to hear from thoughtful intellectuals presenting nuanced opinions. They want to hear from those who brashly and boastfully present themselves as authority figures, and then bolster the listeners preconceived ideas with violently exaggerated language. Shallow but sensational is what sells.
I think that Elons bombastic claims about self driving have really popularized this approach. But you can now see it everywhere in tech: bitcoin going to $1B and nocoiners will be peasants, AI is going to turn us all in to paperclips, and on and on…
I try very hard to fulfill the role of "thoughtful intellectuals presenting nuanced opinions" in the AI space. I'm disappointed that I've failed to meet that standard in your eyes.
it was fine to say this is something new and ppl should maybe look at it. but strongly recommending its and calling it wild is not a nuanced opinion. esp given you have not actually used it yourself in any serious way. is it really that big a ask to only use hype words for things you've actually used and made a big difference to you.
edit: looks like my comments crossed into personally attacking you . i apologize for it.
> This isn’t necessarily surprising, but it’s worth noting anyway. Claude Sonnet 4.5 is capable of building a full Datasette plugin now.
I do worry a bit about how often I use positive adjectives. If something isn't notable I won't write about it though. In this particle case Jesse's prompting / skills stuff really does deserve the superlatives IMO.
I recommend it strongly because the "skills" mechanism it describes is a new and very promising technique, and this is the best article I've seen that explains that.
It's "wild" because, among many other experiments, Jesse has experimented with giving Claude a "feelings journal" and prompting it using Graphviz DOT diagrams.
I'm far from an AI enthusiast but I really appreciate Simon for his articles and takes on AI. He's enthusiastic and optimistic but that doesn't make him a hype man.
That's far from true. Also, please don't cross into personal attack on this site.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, that would be good.
The past few years have taught me that these are the people that rise to the top of society (much to my chagrin).
The average person doesn’t want to hear from thoughtful intellectuals presenting nuanced opinions. They want to hear from those who brashly and boastfully present themselves as authority figures, and then bolster the listeners preconceived ideas with violently exaggerated language. Shallow but sensational is what sells.
I think that Elons bombastic claims about self driving have really popularized this approach. But you can now see it everywhere in tech: bitcoin going to $1B and nocoiners will be peasants, AI is going to turn us all in to paperclips, and on and on…
I try very hard to fulfill the role of "thoughtful intellectuals presenting nuanced opinions" in the AI space. I'm disappointed that I've failed to meet that standard in your eyes.
it was fine to say this is something new and ppl should maybe look at it. but strongly recommending its and calling it wild is not a nuanced opinion. esp given you have not actually used it yourself in any serious way. is it really that big a ask to only use hype words for things you've actually used and made a big difference to you.
edit: looks like my comments crossed into personally attacking you . i apologize for it.
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Here's a counter-example for you from the another day: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Oct/8/claude-datasette-plugin...
> This isn’t necessarily surprising, but it’s worth noting anyway. Claude Sonnet 4.5 is capable of building a full Datasette plugin now.
I do worry a bit about how often I use positive adjectives. If something isn't notable I won't write about it though. In this particle case Jesse's prompting / skills stuff really does deserve the superlatives IMO.
well explain why OPost is "wild" and what makes you recommend it "strongly" .
what have u built with to come to those conclusions ? is this too much to ask.
I recommend it strongly because the "skills" mechanism it describes is a new and very promising technique, and this is the best article I've seen that explains that.
It's "wild" because, among many other experiments, Jesse has experimented with giving Claude a "feelings journal" and prompting it using Graphviz DOT diagrams.
For my previous writing and work on this you can consult my blog - here's the AI-assisted programming tag: https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai-assisted-programming/
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I'm far from an AI enthusiast but I really appreciate Simon for his articles and takes on AI. He's enthusiastic and optimistic but that doesn't make him a hype man.