Jan Wildeboer 😷

I am so old, I actually learned how to program software agents in JAVA back in 1994 as part of my computer science studies. At the time it was supposed to be the future of IT. Software agents would roam the internet for the best deals and report back to me with "job done".

So forgive my "deja vu" reaction when I now hear the same story again, with the main difference being that a deterministic computer language has been replaced with a non-deterministic autocorrect ;)

#SarcasmButOnlyHalf

Feb 24 at 7:14amWeb
Show threadKrisBuytaertFeb 24
@jwildeboer that would be really awesome as Java only popped up in late 1995 iirc
Show threadFabian TranschelFeb 24

@krisbuytaert @jwildeboer Yup, you are correct.

More amazing feels that somehow Java had made it into the IT classes of my school in 2001 - only six years after introduction.

Back then I obviously didn't question that choice, but now I wonder what all the fuzz was about.

We had computers where you could basically visually follow the OS spool up the Java VM and a program call to "hello world" took like 5 seconds.

Show threadFabian TranschelFeb 24
@krisbuytaert @jwildeboer It was because of that observation about Java that I got into proper coding, because I thought there is no way anybody would see a future with Bytecode... turns out that wasn't all that wrong.
Show threadKrisBuytaertFeb 24
@ftranschel @jwildeboer I remember seeing Duke for the first time at Cebit 1996 , I did some Java work in the 1999 - 2000 era.. but I never really liked the ecosystem , way heavy for my tastes.
Show threadKrisBuytaertFeb 24
@ftranschel @jwildeboer should have said too many abstraction levels :)
Show threadJan Wildeboer 😷Feb 24
@ftranschel We are both correct. See https://social.wildeboer.net/@jwildeboer/116124397893169808@[email protected] for more details.
Show threadFabian TranschelFeb 24
@jwildeboer Fair.
Show threadJan Wildeboer 😷Feb 24
@krisbuytaert It started in 1991 and was originally called Oak. At our university, which was filled with SUN hardware, we got early access and worked with it long before the official release as JAVA in 1996. Remember, Oak/Java was planned for interactive television stuff, so hunting for teleshopping deals was one idea. Which we used as template for agentic approaches. Fun times :)
Show threadKrisBuytaertFeb 24
@jwildeboer must have been the same era that I has a summer job hacking perl to scrape websites to build a database to be used as input for "Collaborative Filtering" , does that give us both 30+ years of experience with "AI" ?
Show threadKirtai 🏳️‍⚧️Feb 24
@jwildeboer @krisbuytaert
I am still bitter that Sun didn't get to use Smalltalk like they wanted due to licencing bullshit and had to make Java instead...
Show threadAslak RaanesFeb 24
@kirtai @jwildeboer @krisbuytaert They had Self https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_(programming_language)
Self (programming language) - Wikipedia

Show threadKirtai 🏳️‍⚧️Feb 24
@aslakr @jwildeboer @krisbuytaert
I know, however Sun also tried to licence Smalltalk but the Smalltalk companies were asshats about per-seat licencing and so on.
Show threadGerbrand van DieyenFeb 24
@krisbuytaert @jwildeboer I started at 1997. Agents where a subject at my university too. Data mining was a new big thing too.
Show threadKrisBuytaertFeb 24
@jwildeboer ..also build once run everywhere , we've all heard that lie before :) ..
Show threadReiner Jung 🇬🇱 🇺🇦 🇪🇺Feb 24
@jwildeboer ah yes. I remember now. Agents were the new cool thing. And was there not another "agents are cool" round in 2004-8?
Show threadMetin Seven 🎨Feb 24
@jwildeboer Nostalgie. Indertijd was ik een Amiga game developer, en een vriend van me, Daniël Ockeloen (van de demo-scene groep The Jungle Command), heeft de populariteit van JAVA rond die tijd in Nederland een flinke zet gegeven.
Show threadSimon GreenwoodFeb 24
@jwildeboer I was thinking this while watching OpenAI Agent chew its way through the logs of an online retailer that my company manages. Back then I was working with a company that had written their own custom web browser to do comparison shopping, and who explicitly asked permission to crawl the sites they were comparing, and they got knocked back from most of them.
Show threadEarl Dave of MaegonSaete 🖖Feb 24
@jwildeboer whippersnapper 😉😄
I am so old I was taught how to write self modifying code...
Mind you I thought it was an abomination back in the 1980s and little has happened to change my mind.
Show threadMirko SchenkFeb 24
@DaRC_Fantom @jwildeboer
It is. But if you've got only 2k or less for the entire program, even things like that were used. Well, and malware developers loved it, obviously.
Show threadTomi the Slav and 1024 othersFeb 24
@jwildeboer Ah, the age of Aglets ...
<That's a name I haven't heard in a long time meme>
Show threadMirko SchenkFeb 24
@jwildeboer
Funny, I had similar experiences a few years before. C was all the hot sh*t, but soon (TM) there'd be all those cool "4GL" languages where you just need some clicks to create a fully working program. Oh, and there's that "object" thingy people talk about, might become interesting.
Show threadRichard BairwellFeb 24
@jwildeboer I remember beta testing Java: that was before I was taught how to use the future of DTP - Pagemaker - exposed to Forth, experienced Borland C compiler in DOS and then learned the future of coding "Z Code".
Show threadSkjeggtrollFeb 24

@jwildeboer

My memory is hazy, but wasn't part of the concept at the time that "agents" were mobile pieces of code that would migrate into and run within external systems in order to reach their goals?

Show threadWulfy—Speaker to the machinesFeb 24

@jwildeboer

I don't understand why folks think AI generated code is non-deterministic.

The process is, sure.

But once the code has been vibecoded..
Its deterministic.

There is no vector tree running weighs in your code.
How even?!

It just makes folks sound... Needing a review.

Show threadMill Forge MakerspaceFeb 24
@jwildeboer Remember "software robotics" from the mid-2010s?