If they succeed, Python might have a bright long future after all
Python is slow. It’s one of the slowest programming languages that ever existed. If languages like C, C++, and Rust were hares, then Python wouldn’t even be a hedgehog. Python is a big old snail.
I’m not saying this to throw shame on Python. Most developers don’t care whether their code executes in 12 milliseconds or in 56. This time difference won’t make them late for lunch.
Testament to this carelessness about Python’s speed are the popularity statistics. In the TIOBE index, Python ranks at about the same popularity as C or C++. The PYPL index puts Python at four times the popularity that C or C++ enjoy. According to Google Trends, Python is about three times as popular as its competitors. And on StackOverflow, people ask five times more questions about Python than about C++, and eight times more than about C.
Most developers don’t care so much about runtime speeds as they do about ease of coding. Read More
Daily Archives: October 3, 2022
Company Building in the Curiosity Phase of AI
If you’re on twitter these days you have likely seen a wave of videos that utilize things like Stable Diffusion for fun and novel product concepts/demos. This is happening now that designers have had the requisite time to mess around in DreamStudio or Dall-E, talk to engineers to understand what is possible, and spin up concept art.
This reminds me a lot of prior concept-heavy phases of AR and VR including the launch of Google Glass (we all remember this video), Magic Leap, Spectacles, and more. These concepts were fun the first time you watched them and lost luster over the subsequent viewings as we all litigated how much we really would use a given use-case (all while ignoring the UX of using the actual hardware).
Unfortunately, the steady flow of twitter retweets and likes led the AR/VR community to get too focused on fun use-cases versus high-value utility that people repeatedly wanted.1
Now that we have composability of AI models, there is a new wave of AI-first products/features making their way into the world. These effective demos will likely lead to a barrage of AI-first products that see high short-term usage followed by material churn, driven by the collective curiosity of a variety of industries. Read More
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