Zack Brown

Co-founder / CEO @developingpax
Formerly Co-founder / CEO Haiku, Y Combinator alum (W18), University of Washington computer engineering

[Zack Brown @zackaboo]

Excited to share a demo of Pax & why we're building it. Software creation should be more creative.

[Pax @DevelopingPax]

Meet Pax

[Zack Brown @zackaboo]

When a domain-specific language elegantly maps its domain, large language models become domain experts.

Examples include Terraform & SQL.

[Paul Graham @paulg]

@KevinSVanHorn Learn to cook, loser.

[Pax @DevelopingPax]

Build with words. Control the details. A new way to collaborate with AI.

[Zack Brown @zackaboo]

Still haven’t used the library! 🤷‍♂️ Just wanted to see if I could go from idea to publish on an open source project on a whim.

The whole process took about 15 minutes.

Wonder if this is a similar feeling as going across an ocean by airplane when airplanes were new.

[Zack Brown @zackaboo]

Rather than copy and paste the files, I asked o1 to write a script that would ⁠`cat` out all of the files in one go for me, and it did.

I ran its script; fixed one compiler error. Unit tests and sanity check passed.

So I documented & published it: https://t.co/67Bqime4DK https://t.co/Fl4BbPB9y4

[Zack Brown @zackaboo]

Then I asked o1 to package its solution as a crate, labeling file names with their contents, along with unit tests, that I could publish without further intervention.

[Zack Brown @zackaboo]

My prompt specified management of ⁠ `Arc` ⁠ and ⁠` Weak` ⁠ for nodes vs. edges of the graph, to handle the memory leak hazard of circular references ⁠, while leveraging `Arc`s advantages as a concurrency-friendly smart pointer.

This approach results in a very simple implementation; this is a famously unergonomic problem in Rust.

[Zack Brown @zackaboo]

Yesterday I used @OpenAI o1-preview to write a graph data structure in Rust.

[Zack Brown @zackaboo]

@rauchg Exactly the opposite — the lowest-entropy solution will win as LLMs bring switching costs to zero.

This is bigger than frameworks: LLMs will bring us to a post-HTML world.

HTML/CSS are a poor substrate for UIs: complicated, legacy, perf, visuospatially mangled

What comes next?

[Zack Brown @zackaboo]

@GabrielObaldia 💀

[Zack Brown @zackaboo]

Nvidia breaking a $3T market cap is inspirational. Designing chips for Nvidia could have been my career path after college! But that wasn't my passion.

Nonetheless, I will celebrate that I just used my higher education to repair my dead refrigerator for $8 in parts.

[Zack Brown @zackaboo]

Let's design more software like we design hardware.

Beautiful block diagram from https://t.co/Bs1PheWwV8

[Pax @DevelopingPax]

for those Gradius fans out there 🚀:
https://t.co/OFi8Y2f6wf

[Zack Brown @zackaboo]

Check out @warfajibril building our website in Pax Create. Visual building + natural language + code, all affecting the same substrate. This is the future of building software.

[Pax @DevelopingPax]

Sneak peek of Pax Create: building the https://t.co/dkm9UD1hIM website

[Zack Brown @zackaboo]

"I turn with terror and horror from this lamentable scourge of continuous functions with no derivatives." — Charles Hermite

[Zack Brown @zackaboo]

New essay dropped: https://t.co/2LkGttWOcg

[Zack Brown @zackaboo]

Today for the first time, I talk about what I've been building for the last 18 months: Pax. I'm thrilled to partner up with @warfajibril to make software creation more accessible, more creative, and more collaborative! Read more: https://t.co/0BVwwcP7au

[Warfa Jibril @warfajibril]

A few reflections over the last year and a work update! Excited to be building @pax_lang with @zackaboo
https://t.co/uPdItBcSRB

[Zack Brown @zackaboo]

@jina Sweet spread. Open several & compare! Tobalá is distinctive & wonderful IMO.

Don't forget the sal de gusano 🐛