Knowledge Updates

Observations while developing web applications and creating great software.

Gopher and the early days of AI

The current set of AI tools reminds me of the early days of the internet, with its related and/or competing technologies, like Usenet, Telnet, WAIS, FTP, Gopher and WWW/HTTP. Nobody yet knew which would succeed or fail. It was a time of curiosity, excitement — and nervousness… https://t.co/JMQdGOAKcE pic.twitter.com/YpCqx9r3Q8
— Michael Heraghty (@UserJourneys) January 5, 2025

? Browsing the web in Netscape I just ended up on the gopher:// part of the internet and it's still alive

Gopher is the actual predecessor to the modern WWW, no modern browser supports it anymore

But Netscape does, and there's actually a whole world out there of people still… https://t.co/47FVgrajh5 pic.twitter.com/Jx8rTY9QeB
— @levelsio (@levelsio) October 28, 2024

2025-01-18 #
llama98.c ↗
Alex Cheema at Exo Labs presents llama98.c — a modified llama2.c by Andrej Karpathy that runs on Windows 98.
- 260K model: 35.9 tok/sec
- 15M model: 1.03 tok/sec
- 1B model: 0.0093 tok/sec
A few days ago, Alex shared a behind-the-scenes look on how it was made. The thread covers using FTP to transfer model weights and inference code to discovering how to build modern software for Windows 98:

Modern compilers didn't work.

Used Borland C++ 5.02, a 26-year-old IDE and compiler that ran directly on Windows 98.

It supports a very old version of C/C++. Unfortunately C++ had changed too much so modern C++ programs wouldn't compile in Borland, but C has changed… pic.twitter.com/INNLyIVKqt
— Alex Cheema – e/acc (@alexocheema) January 15, 2025

On the topic of compiling for old hardware, Sam D’Amico shared DJGPP — a relatively modern port of GCC and interesting on its own!

Next time you can use GCC: https://t.co/Lfm0fH6YzR
— Sam D'Amico (@sdamico) January 15, 2025
2025-01-17 #
React Scan ↗
React Scan by Aiden Bai automatically detects performance issues in React apps. From the website:

Previously, existing tools required lots of code change, lacked simple visual cues, and didn’t have a simple, portable API

Instead, React Scan:
- Requires no code changes – just drop it in
- Highlights exactly the components you need to optimize
- Available via script tag, npm, CLI, you name it!
React Scan will soon show what props caused a component to render as well:

New: React Scan shows what props caused a component to render! pic.twitter.com/PJctZmcO2X
— Aiden Bai (@aidenybai) January 14, 2025

And allow for recording and replying renders!

in the next version of React Scan:

record & replay renders (and UI changes!) pic.twitter.com/VvcyJTOs8F
— Aiden Bai (@aidenybai) January 14, 2025

Previously: Bippy and React Fibers.
2025-01-16 #
Bippy Inspector ↗
You can visually inspect React trees with a couple lines of code with the excellent Bippy toolkit by Aiden Bai.
```
import { Inspector } from 'bippy';

<Inspector enabled={true} />
```
Works with React v17-19!

what if you could visually analyze your React app? pic.twitter.com/MMkQ36ovGU
— Aiden Bai (@aidenybai) January 13, 2025

Previously: Bippy and React Fibers.
2025-01-15 #
Cool URIs Don’t Change (1998) ↗

What makes a cool URI?
A cool URI is one which does not change.
What sorts of URI change?
URIs don’t change: people change them.
Tim Berners-Lee, 1998

Lots of respect for people who keep old URIs working. It becomes a lot easier when URIs are designed like the rest of your software.

Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1990. He wrote the first browser on a NeXT Computer.

2025-01-14 #

Knowledge Updates

Gopher and the early days of AI

llama98.c ↗

React Scan ↗

Bippy Inspector ↗

Cool URIs Don’t Change (1998) ↗