Jonathan Franco

AI Director during the day, building cool things at night

[Jonathan Franco @senzametro]

@Jayyanginspires Loving something is a decision

[Taelin @VictorTaelin]

Bend2 launches tomorrow (maybe?)

Let me talk a little bit

For these who don't know me, I'm Victor. I've started programming when I was 11 years old, when I maintained a popular Open Tibia server in C++ and Lua. Since then, I enrolled Computer Engineering (never finished), helped build Ethereum, and have been studying programming language theory for the last decade. I've then built Kind (a minimal proof language), HVM (a parallel VM), and Bend1 (an early prototype of Bend2).

So, what is Bend2?

You can describe it as "the language design I honestly consider to be the best possible for a post-AGI economy".

Bend2 doesn't have interaction nets, because I could not make them as fast as lower-order variants on everyday hardware, and Bend2 is designed to be practical, not idealistic. So, these expecting a Haskell-like lambda calculus engine will be disappointed. It is closer to C than it is to Haskell. But it still feels incredibly high-level, with JS-like closures and allocation (yet no GC!), Lean-like dependent types, and, of course, Bend1-like parallelism (with up to 100x faster raw speeds).

So, Bend2 is something new that, on my honest PoV, has the potential to become the most sensible choice for any vibe-coded project. It is fast like C, parallel like CUDA, feels like Python. And, on top of that, it has something rare: a complete proof system, like Lean, which some of you may recognize as the language that labs like OpenAI and Anthropic have been using to solve open mathematical problems like Navier-Stokes.

Bend brings that same proof system to a super fast app-centric language, allowing you to shift these powerful theorem proving models into ensuring that your apps are bug-free and hack-proof. The same capabilities that proved Navier-Stokes will now be writing real proofs that your own apps are correct. And I envision this as the obvious future of vibe-coded codebases.

In a post-AGI economy, humans will eventually stop writing and reading code, but we still need a precise language to communicate our intents to the AI's maintaining our codebases. Bend is that language.

Of course, Bend is not perfect yet. Writing a programming language is hard. Writing a proof language is 10x harder than that. Proving its consistency is 10x harder than that. Compiling it to the GPU, including closures, unrestricted recursion, fast object allocation and GC-free collection... is something nobody else has done before.

So, needless to say: *expect bugs and limitations*.

There is a huge ass section in our README talking about current limitations. For example, u64 and f64 are out. I did try adding them, but Metal doesn't even support f64. I gave up for now. On the brigher side, we have 32-bit numbers now, and Bend1's 2 GB memory limit has been lifted to 8 TB. Bend2 has a LOT of features that Bend1 lacked, and you'll find them in our guide.

Bugs are expected mostly in the compiler, which, unlike the trusted proof kernel (which is very stable already), has a LOT of AI slop. There is no way on Earth there won't be many bugs. So, if your app crashes on day 1: please be patient, report and let us fix it <3

On the business: we ship without a product. Everything I could think of was either blocked by laws, or by the market not paying for compilers, and I'd rather increase our chances of success, than risk them just to make some immediate profit, or delay it foreer. Yes, years working in a project that isn't going to make a cent. I'm ok with it, because we have other, cooler things being cooked, and these are waaay easier to sell.

So, yes, I'm giving this all to the world. Wanna show some appreciation? Just use it, create some apps, tell your friends about it, give it a fair chance and don't immediately give up if the compiler crashes or someone proves Empty on day 1 (yes, the theory is formalized, but the kernel drifted, so early days exploits are not impossible). If you find any bug, report it. If you miss any feature, request it.

Our team of 4 humans (and 25 non-humans!) will be working hard to fix issues, address limitations, and make this language competitive with the mature alternatives in the market. I'm really proud of Bend2, I think it has the potential to become best language of choice for vibe-coded project, and I hope you find it as useful as I do.

That's it for now. See you tomorrow(?) ^-^

[Jonathan Franco @senzametro]

@Shpigford With a Costco/Walmart 20 minutes away

[Jonathan Franco @senzametro]

@eptwts @vasuman I’m in

[EP @eptwts]

over the past year i've helped dozens of people grow their personal brand on X & YT...

i've built a 7fig/year business off the back of it without charging anyone a SINGLE dollar

if you wanna work with me, i'm making a free group chat for anyone who thinks they can benefit from my help

requirements:

> must be building on whop, or planning to
> must be high agency
> must have the time to make content

what's in it for you

> free content strategy assistance
> a free launchpad for your personal brand
> monthly rewards for the best content

i wanna build a network of 100+ people building & documenting their journey publicly in a way others can benefit from

if you're interested in joining, RT this tweet & reply "i'm in" & i'll DM you

[Dr. Brian Hoeflinger, MD @drhoeflinger]

I’m a retired brain surgeon and I wanna tell you why you feel like life is passing by. I just need one minute to explain this to you so hang in there.

Repetitive daily routines stop the brain from recording clear detailed memories. When every day looks the same, your brain does not track time the same as a clock does. It tracks change. If nothing new happens then days, months, and years start to blur together.

This is know as Time compression. When life lacks variety, your brain compresses past days together, making it feel like time is sped up.

To stop feeling like life is passing you by, add new experiences to your life. Break routine habits, like changing your daily home routine, taking a different route to work, or trying a new hobby.

Schedule small trips or plan new adventures so your days do not blend together.

Practice mindfulness by staying fully focused on what you are doing right now and not trying to race off to the next task.

Keep a journal and write down happy memories or memorable parts of the day before you go to sleep.

Take deep, calm breaths when you feel anxious or rushed to return your focus to the moment.

You can and you will retrain your brain to not feel like life is passing you by by following these few simple measures.

[James Clear @JamesClear]

Life rarely changes in a positive way without an increase in responsibility.

That can mean taking ownership of your health or committing to a relationship or starting a business.

Whatever it is, if you want the trajectory to change, the amount of responsibility usually has to change.

[dax @thdxr]

@NathanFlurry the issue is that a lot of us are married and our wives want to murder us whenever we use voice

[The Pragmatic Engineer @Pragmatic_Eng]

Anyone who thinks software engineering is ‘going away’ doesn’t understand the job. @KentBeck, creator of XP and TDD, on why Dario has it wrong:

[Gergely: Dario said, I quote, ‘coding is going away first, then all of software engineering’. ]

“That's a statement by someone who doesn't understand software engineering. Coding is part of what you're doing, but it's only a small part of what you're doing, even if it takes up a fair amount of time.

You're building confidence, you're building connections with other people, you’re building your own understanding. All those things are happening while you're coding. And coding's actually a great way to cement understanding. The more you program, the more you understand the domain that you're working in. And so to say, well, we're just going to pass all that off to a machine. Well, that's not all there is to it.

A couple of days ago I saw a phrase, and it really hit me, that we're accumulating code faster than we're accumulating trust now. And that sense of trust comes from me struggling to understand some domain concept, ah, I get it! I represented it in the code. I write tests that demonstrate that I really did understand it and now, I trust my program. If we're programming together, that act of programming together means that we trust each other more.

And none of that can be automated. None of that occurs. If we prompt, we get the finger guns, the genie goes, yeah, it's all finished, boss. And it is like, well, hang on, finished. What's finished?”

[Jonathan Franco @senzametro]

@nikitabier @levelsio I’m sorry for your loss man. Sending love and prayers for you and your family

[Ben Dicken @BenjDicken]

TLDR

[Mitchell Hashimoto @mitchellh]

The problem with the "if it works who cares what the code looks like" mindset for agentic work is that it assumes the agent has a perfect understanding of "works." Realistically, things are underspecified, agents make bad assumptions, etc.

To be fair, agents are pretty good at unit test coverage. They're pretty bad at designing human experiences (API, CLI flags, etc.), especially cohesive ones for future roadmap plans they may not have visibility into (unless your backlog is perfect and vision fully laid out, which I doubt). They're bad at knowing where performance matters and what type (CPU vs memory tradeoffs). They're bad at where compatibility matters and where it doesn't (and tend to err on the side of preserving it without further guidance). Etc.

Unless you have this ALL specified, you can't possibly claim "it works" without taking a look and thinking about it.

[Jonathan Franco @senzametro]

@FlorinPop17

[Jonathan Franco @senzametro]

@TecEdSocial Congrats man!

[Matthew Prince 🌥 @eastdakota]

There a LOT of performative AI right now. Inside your org it wastes tokens/money. In biz dev it’s a distraction. Focus purely on ROI.

[Uncle Bob Martin @unclebobmartin]

I get how uncomfortable it feels to disengage from the syntax, from the sequence, selection, and iteration of code, from the dopamine hit of getting a complicated function to execute properly. I get it. I've been coding for longer than most of you have been alive -- I get it.

But the bar has been raised. And if I, someone who has been coding for more than six decades, can clear that bar, you should be able to clear it too.

And fear not, I've found plenty of joy on the topside of that bar. It just take a leap...

[Jonathan Franco @senzametro]

@VicVijayakumar @ThinkAppraiser Did you move to Amsterdam?

[Jonathan Franco @senzametro]

@rakyll Go is build for concurrency and simplicity, so it’s great to see that happening

[Jonathan Franco @senzametro]

@alangsilveira Winter will be cold for us this year lol