alt.hn

7/6/2026 at 7:40:22 PM

Python 3.14 compiled to metal – no interpreter

 https://github.com/can1357/pon

by hamza_q_

7/6/2026 at 8:39:35 PM

A few problems with this Fable's project:

1. It's not Python by any means, it's a subset with its own runtime, its own quirks and nuances;

2. It will be impossible to maintain parity with CPython without AI assistance;

3. It will die the same way as dozens of similar (even non-AI projects) died before, and reasons will be the same: (1) and (2).

by leobuskin

7/6/2026 at 8:42:55 PM

"Without ai assistance" - ok, but what about with ai assistance?

by subarctic

7/6/2026 at 8:50:06 PM

It's possible, but we're at the moment when most of us can ask Fable to implement a custom compiler to a custom target for our favorite language, and even use it as a part of custom solution. Why do I need someone else's implementation? Where's the magic in this project? What's the secret sauce?

by leobuskin

7/6/2026 at 9:20:07 PM

>Where's the magic in this project? What's the secret sauce?

Someone else paying for the tokens.

Also someone seeing it through (should that come). Obviously we're not "at the moment when most of us can ask Fable to implement a custom compiler to a custom target for our favorite language, and even use it as a part of custom solution", without thousands to spare and lots of time to shape the solution.

by coldtea

7/6/2026 at 9:22:11 PM

It's like we invented a worse github.

by cyanydeez

7/6/2026 at 9:42:57 PM

To be fair, most of the training data likely came from GitHub.

by dotancohen

7/6/2026 at 9:26:37 PM

Gimphub.

by coldtea

7/6/2026 at 8:50:01 PM

For a project like this, relying on AI assistance also makes it effectively dead in the water.

by zahlman

7/6/2026 at 8:52:48 PM

Why?

by minimaxir

7/6/2026 at 9:09:31 PM

Time-cost for machines instead of willing knowledgeable humans. The former requires money, the latter requires passion.

Arguably, passion for a project is without price.

by all2

7/6/2026 at 9:09:29 PM

A memory of theirs. Trying to use some heavily quantized gpt-3 era toddler to assist the development of a project. Maybe. A blind posit. Yea

by bt1a

7/6/2026 at 9:20:28 PM

I don’t want to be mean, but try to run a large project and you’ll realize there’s more to it than “can I find some bodies to crank out code”

by chomp

7/6/2026 at 9:08:06 PM

it will be impossible to maintain parity with wetware

by bt1a

7/6/2026 at 9:57:25 PM

Then the question is why? Because that is an another way of saying donating tokens.

by up2isomorphism

7/6/2026 at 9:10:09 PM

Reading is hard.

It runs and passes the full cpython testsuite, just 5x faster.

With AI it's 100x easier to maintain than by hand.

It reminds my on pperl. same approach using crane lift. Looks good

by rurban

7/6/2026 at 9:15:05 PM

It passes only curated corpus (snippets), not the full CPython test suite. So, yes, reading is hard. Nothing against AI, btw.

by leobuskin

7/6/2026 at 9:11:34 PM

How am I misreading this part of the readme?

> What is explicitly not done yet — this is the active roadmap, in order: > CPython test suite (cpython-full): the standing grind; failures are clustered and burned down per wave.

by ubercore

7/6/2026 at 10:08:06 PM

Awesome. Not for this repo specifically; more about the trend. More people are realizing that we have such powerful tools at our disposal and will want to do something awesome, worth while with them. Of course, many will fall off after a week, then more after a month, but some will survive. Knowledge will be spread and some will be winners through adoption. Grit can lead to knowledge, and can lead to awesome stuff.

by dr_kretyn

7/6/2026 at 9:19:42 PM

>> The project is under heavy active development

Is a pretty oof sentence for a project with one contributor and no users. Just reeks of llm barf with no oversight.

by getpokedagain

7/6/2026 at 9:37:48 PM

I am a fan of AI assistance, but “ratchet” is pretty much a Claude giveaway. The kids, now in their twenties because the reference is dated, might make a joke here.

by tclancy

7/6/2026 at 8:18:48 PM

I hate to be that guy, but... one week old project, clear signs of vibing. I will be shocked if the remaining work listed (cpython test suite) proceeds in any reasonable timeline.

This is a pretty hard problem to just solve in a week.

EDIT: and man, these kind of comments LLM created comments are really starting to grind my gears as my job slowly turns into reviewing LLM PRs:

> Known gaps at the language level are burned down through the ratcheted floors above — the committed floor files, not this README, are the authoritative compatibility baseline.

by ubercore

7/6/2026 at 8:33:24 PM

This is written by fable with the guidance of a very experienced, highly skilled person. See their previous work.

by himata4113

7/6/2026 at 9:55:26 PM

This guy is behind the awesome Oh My Pi agent, so I’d give him a chance.

by roger_

7/6/2026 at 8:54:57 PM

Experience doesn't change the fundamental problem. I don't see this project going anywhere for general use beyond their needs.

by throwaway27448

7/6/2026 at 8:27:12 PM

of course it is vibed.

it doesn't matter as long as it works.

by baq

7/6/2026 at 8:29:04 PM

That's the neat part, when it's vibed it works, until it doesn't and then it's really hard to make it work again.

by ActionHank

7/6/2026 at 9:24:39 PM

>when it's vibed it works, until it doesn't and then it's really hard to make it work again

Is it?

People have solved AI bugs with AI. If some vibe project eventually hits some bug and stops working, what exactly stops using AI to fix it? Is the idea that bugs will go beyond the limits of AI capability?

If you meant to say that when an AI vibe coded project beyond some complexity it's difficult for a human coder to manually go through all the code they didn't write, understand it, and find the issue, sure.

by coldtea

7/6/2026 at 9:55:22 PM

The problem is the _way_ AI will solve an AI bug. I've seen the loop countless times. There's a creeping complexity and brittleness that creeps in over time as more and more complexity is left purely to the LLM agent. It will become unsustainable without a human understanding and making course corrections at some point.

by ubercore

7/6/2026 at 8:31:16 PM

In 12 months… vibe code mess. Or discontinued. Or both.

by kameit00

7/6/2026 at 10:03:51 PM

How much time have you spent with Fable? We're in new territory here. It does not create messes.

by ttul

7/6/2026 at 10:20:50 PM

Anecdote, yes, but I am _right now in the middle of helping Fable clean up a mess_. Complex code is hard and Fable still makes mistakes.

by ubercore

7/6/2026 at 8:35:05 PM

Given the stdlib modules listed as "explicitly not done yet", I'm going to say: it doesn't yet, in any meaningful sense. The question then becomes: how confident do we feel that it will work in the near future?

by mcphage

7/6/2026 at 8:57:45 PM

I was trying to say "not confident at all" but hedged a bit too much.

I see this as a case of the "quick to get to a POC that falls apart after sustained development for the same reasons it didn't work pre-Fable" problem.

by ubercore

7/6/2026 at 9:53:34 PM

Looks like it still uses python object model. You need auto unboxing for good performance.

by drivebyhooting

7/6/2026 at 8:30:17 PM

Can it run Numpy and Torch?

by cuzezzzbbfofai

7/6/2026 at 8:52:08 PM

pickle files are usually the limiter here. I would be surprised if it can handle pickle files since it relies so much on runtime LUTs of the objects and arbitrary object definitions. This usually doesn't work in other use cases such as swig or cython either IIRC.

by smithza

7/6/2026 at 9:27:11 PM

For NumPy/Pytorch, the C API is much bigger issue than pickle. I have not looked at the architecture of this, but given it uses its own IR + replaces ref counting w/ a GC, I am assuming it does not have C API compatibility.

by cdavid

7/6/2026 at 8:33:20 PM

What happens if you call exec/eval? Are they just not available?

by echoangle

7/6/2026 at 9:20:20 PM

It uses JIT

by leobuskin

7/6/2026 at 8:52:25 PM

this as well as pickle files will likely be unavailable

by smithza

7/6/2026 at 8:58:51 PM

[dead]

by moronicles

7/6/2026 at 9:11:22 PM

Don't we have Nuitka for this?

by RantyDave

7/6/2026 at 9:40:26 PM

It's not the same, that one works.

by LtWorf

7/6/2026 at 8:20:25 PM

How does performance compare to RustPython compiled in a similar way?

by westurner

7/6/2026 at 8:49:15 PM

Can those AI slop projects have a reserved tag on HackerNews? So many in the past few weeks I wouldn't have clicked and wasted my time on if I knew it was just some vibe-coded garbage.

by iLoveOncall

7/6/2026 at 8:53:46 PM

I see the same thing, and believe that ironically AI is going to bring about the return of good search engines as we’re currently drowning in slop and need a real way to filter it.

by andy99