2023.07.10 - Let Rural Education Live Simply and Dignified

Title: 2023.07.10 – Let Rural Education Live Simply and Dignified

The Web & AI Agents & CommonJS & Data‑Oriented Design & 本分

This Week’s Highlights

How to build a website without frameworks and tons of libraries https://www.kodingkitty.com/blog/how-to-build-a-website/
Web development can stay simple without sacrificing too much. In fact, limiting yourself to a few options can be liberating. Based on what we’ve seen, many customers would benefit from solutions that are faster, simpler, and cheaper. But don’t just take our word for it—look around the web and ask yourself: could the same result be achieved with a less complex tech stack?

I Made 7 Predictions For The Web For The Next 5 Years https://fagnerbrack.com/i-made-7-predictions-for-the-web-for-the-next-5-years-d750d93b1b5a
Now 7 years later, here’s what happened.

AI Agents Boom: The Early Shape of Software 2.0, What’s Next for OpenAI https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Jb8HBbaKYXXxTSQOBsP5Wg
AI agents are seen as OpenAI’s next big focus. Co‑founder Andrej Karpathy recently said in a public event that “compared with model‑training methods, OpenAI is currently more focused on the Agent side; whenever a new AI‑Agents paper appears, we get excited and discuss it seriously.” Earlier, Karpathy also described AutoGPT as the next stage of Prompt Engineering.

GPT‑4 API General Availability and Deprecation of Older Models in the Completions API https://openai.com/blog/gpt-4-api-general-availability
GPT‑3.5 Turbo, DALL·E, and Whisper APIs are now generally available, and we are publishing a deprecation plan for older Completions‑API models, which will be retired at the beginning of 2024. Related:

• “Web3” and “AI”
• The AI Dividend
• Prompt engineering and prompt whispering
• AI‑Powered Tools for UX Research: Issues and Limitations
• A human‑centric approach to adopting AI
• Introducing Superalignment
• Why knowledge management is foundational to AI success
• Do large language models know what they are talking about?

Deep Reads

JavaScript Gom Jabbar https://frantic.im/javascript-gom-jabbar/
You’ve been using JavaScript for ten years. It’s time for your test. You sit in front of a computer, and the test is simple: open a package.json file and read it. The package.json is full of pain. You have to read the whole thing.

Breaking Up with SVG‑in‑JS in 2023 https://kurtextrem.de/posts/svg-in-js
SVGs in JS have a cost, and they don’t belong in your JS bundle. It’s time to bring back SVG‑in‑HTML. Let’s look at better techniques for using SVG in JSX while keeping our JS bundle small and performant. Related: Understanding SVG Paths.

Regex Engine Internals as a Library https://blog.burntsushi.net/regex-internals/
Over the past several years I’ve rewritten Rust’s regex crate to enable better internal composition and to make it easier to add optimizations while preserving correctness. During the rewrite I created a new crate, regex-automata, which exposes much of the regex crate’s internals as separate APIs for others to use. To my knowledge, this is the first regex library to expose its internals to this degree as a separately versioned library. This post discusses the problems that prompted the rewrite, how the rewrite solved them, and a guided tour of regex-automata’s API.

CommonJS Is Hurting JavaScript https://deno.com/blog/commonjs-is-hurting-javascript https://bun.sh/blog/commonjs-is-not-going-away
JavaScript, the undisputed king of web development, is being sabotaged—not by a rival language or a revolutionary new technology, but by its own legacy baggage. The insidious saboteur is none other than CommonJS, the antiquated module system we’ve tolerated far too long.

Data‑Oriented Design https://www.dataorienteddesign.com/dodbook/dodmain.html
Data‑oriented design has existed in one form or another for decades, but it only received its name from Noel Llopis in his September 2009 article [#!NoelDOD!#]. Whether it constitutes a programming paradigm is contentious. Many believe it can coexist with other paradigms—object‑oriented, procedural, functional. In that sense they are right: data‑oriented design can function alongside other paradigms, but that does not preclude it from being a distinct way to approach large‑scale programming.

Fresh Picks

• Deno 1.35: A fast and convenient way to build web servers
• Cloud‑Backed SQLite
• Rejected GitHub Profile Achievements
• What’s Next for JavaScript: New Features to Look Forward to
• Remotion v4.0: A Big Step Forward for React Video Creation
• MathLive: A Web Component for Math Input
• What’s Next For Redux with Mark Erikson?
• Meta Uses Khronos Open Standards in New Intermediate Graphics Library

Products & Others

Millions are “praying” to ChatGPT https://www.geekpark.net/news/321409
Hosting worship, simulating Buddha, assisting evangelism… AI is reshaping traditional religious practices.

Product Management Wisdom and Why Context Matters https://akkshaya.blog/2023/07/09/product-management-advice/
What I’ve observed from being in the same bubble is that most eye‑opening product‑management advice is largely theoretical. It sounds great and may make us feel empowered, but reality varies dramatically based on a company’s culture, goals, stage, and the mindset of its people.

Going Rogue https://www.filfre.net/2023/07/going-rogue/
In the gaming world’s “slums,” open‑source projects can create their own strong design and aesthetic sensibilities—something rarely seen in commercial, closed‑source games. Examination shows this isn’t an anomaly. The “Roguelike” sub‑type of CRPGs dates back to the 1980s, long before the modern open‑source movement. Yet, like that movement, it stems from the hacker culture of institutional computing that has existed since the 1950s, where proprietary software was viewed not so much as immoral but as unheard of. Today, it is the best example of open source—while also highlighting where open source falls short. Call it an exception that proves the rule.

江湖心法 https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Rt6XW1hYUIvDg1Z41U8NGQ
When Wang Huiwen fell ill, Meituan took over “Light‑Years Away.” Some said Wang Xing was righteous—an ill‑chosen phrase. The beauty of the two‑character word “本分” (integrity) is that it says nothing while saying everything. “本分” isn’t a concrete rule; it’s about following the natural order of things, similar to Elon Musk’s “first‑principles” thinking. The difference: first‑principles stress external, physical logic; “本分” stresses internal, mental grasp. Physical logic is universal; mental grasp varies by person and situation. The character “本” is the essence Confucius referred to: “A gentleman focuses on the root; when the root is established, the Way follows.” Duan Yongping said, “Borrow and return; borrowing again is easy.” The “borrow and return” part is “本分,” while “borrowing again is easy” is utilitarian. When you stop thinking about “borrowing again is easy,” you truly embody “本分.” Likewise, “无敌 in the heart” is “本分,” while “invincible in the world” is utilitarian. “本分” is the cause; utility is the effect. Bodhisattvas seek cause; ordinary beings seek effect—so you see, embodying “本分” is the path of a bodhisattva; ordinary people are not “本分.”

Let Rural Education Live Simply and Dignified https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/d6GDUguDKlSSC12cUuJp9g
The countryside should be everyone’s spiritual home, the place of the heart, the root of one’s being. Rural schools are not only the cultural, civilizational, and educational centers of their communities, but also… (content truncated)

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Originally written by Ping Xia (平侠) and published in Chinese on Web技术周刊 (Web Tech Weekly). Translated and adapted for DriftSeas with permission.