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bubblyworld commented on The Geometry of Schemes [pdf]   webhomes.maths.ed.ac.uk/~... · Posted by u/measurablefunc
aleph_minus_one · a month ago
Even though I am from in a different area of mathematics, I know quite many people who work(ed) in algebraic geometry (and at the university where I graduated there wasn't even an academic chair for (Grothendieck-style) algebraic geometry).

The amount of people I know who would love to learn this material is even many, many magnitudes larger (just to give some arbitrary example: some pretty smart person who studied physics, but (for some reasons) neither had any career prospects in research nor found any fullfilling job, who just out of boredom decided that he would love to get deeply into Grothendieck-style algebraic geometry).

bubblyworld · a month ago
I guess we hang out in different academic circles. I met a single algebraic geometer in my whole academic career. But people are into very different stuff where I come from, which may have biased me (topology, number theory and category theory for the most part, and a lot of relativity/fluid dynamics on the applied side of the department). Based on rough estimates from papers published on arxiv over the last few years, I (very) conservatively estimate there are ~5000 working algebraic geometers in the world right now.

> The amount of people I know who would love to learn this material [...]

I am one of them =) but my point wasn't really about people who want to learn the material (which I assume includes many orders of magnitude more humans) it was about people who already deeply understand it.

bubblyworld commented on Dead Framework Theory   aifoc.us/dead-framework-t... · Posted by u/jhuleatt
mexicocitinluez · a month ago
> I don't buy the premise - that LLMs being trained on more React code than other frameworks is going to cause the collapse of alternatives

But if less people are exposed to those frameworks, then surely that means they will be less popular? I'm struggling to understand your argument.

> he data presented in the article isn't very convincing to me - it's absolute numbers, it's not a zero-sum game,

Of course it is. If I'm using React to build a site, I'm not using Svelte to build it. It less people are using a framework, there will be less funding. If more people use it, more money.

> I don't think it's sensible to extrapolate from current trends about LLM coding anyway.

The actual tools themselves are using React. Bolt, a UI design LLM, uses React by default. i don't even think there's an option to use a different language right now. These tools have taken over the industry, and have absolutely exploded in popularity in the few years they've been available. This is going to create a snowball effect.

> This stuff is barely a few years old and we want to make confident predictions about it?

I don't think you read the article as closely as you think you do. Saying "React has probably spiked in popularity because LLM's use it be default" isn't that controversial. And it's true. And I don't think it's a long shot to say "If there's less data associated with a framework, it'll be less likely to be used by these tools and then less likely to be used at all." In fact, it feels like a pretty obvious conclusion.

We can ignore what is clearly happening (which even as a React dev I don't want because it WILL limit my future options) or work to make sure those tools are offering other defaults.

bubblyworld · a month ago
> But if less people are exposed to those frameworks, then surely that means they will be less popular?

I agree, but I don't think the data suggests that is what's happening. The data presented in the article shows only that the number of new sites made with React has increased greatly since LLMs arrived on the scene. But there's a base rate fallacy here - we aren't shown data for any other frameworks!

>Of course it is.

That's not what I mean by a zero-sum game. There isn't a fixed number of websites that different frameworks are taking a share of (this would be a zero-sum game). The number of websites itself has massively increased since LLMs arrived on the scene. You can very quickly spin up 100 new sites using your new framework without all the other frameworks "losing" 100 sites, you know what I mean? Similarly I think the number of people making websites has exploded for the same reason.

And this is another explanation for the data in the article - that there are simply way more sites being created now that it's so trivial for anyone to make one. Have a look at the StackExchange links I gave in my last comment. There isn't much evidence there that React is overwhelming the industry (especially amongst professional devs), although I grant you it would be difficult to measure if it were true.

> The actual tools themselves are using React. [...] These tools have taken over the industry.

Yes, but so have plenty of other tools that don't use React by default, like Claude Code or Codex. There are plenty of new websites being made across all of the major frameworks.

> I don't think you read the article as closely as you think you do.

Do you mind cutting it out with the ad-hominems? I've been nothing but respectful to you, and in each of your replies you've made little jabs at me about "not understanding the article". I just disagree with you, friend, be nice =)

bubblyworld commented on The Geometry of Schemes [pdf]   webhomes.maths.ed.ac.uk/~... · Posted by u/measurablefunc
aleph_minus_one · a month ago
> That's a theory, but I think it's more likely that the few people in the world who deeply understand schemes are locked in the basement of a mathematics department somewhere, and not on hacker news =P

I rather think that because of the very low career prospects in research, quite a lot of people who are good in this area rather left research and took some job in finance or at some Silicon Valley company, and thus might actually at least sometimes have a look at what happens on Hacker News. :-)

bubblyworld · a month ago
I think you overestimate how many people exist in the world with a professional interest in algebraic geometry! The vast majority of mathematicians have no idea how to compute with schemes (and there aren't that many of them to begin with).
bubblyworld commented on Dead Framework Theory   aifoc.us/dead-framework-t... · Posted by u/jhuleatt
mexicocitinluez · a month ago
> I don't buy it, I've used LLMs (

You don't buy what, exactly?

> As usual, requires a lot of handholding and care to get good results, but I've found this is true for react codebases just as much as anything else.

I think you and others in this thread have either just skimmed the article or just read the headline. The point isn't that you can't use LLMs for other languages, its that the creators of these tools AREN'T using other languages for them. Yes, LLM's can write Angular. But if there's less data to train on, the results won't be as good. And because of this, it's creating a snowball effect.

bubblyworld · a month ago
I don't buy the premise - that LLMs being trained on more React code than other frameworks is going to cause the collapse of alternatives. The data presented in the article isn't very convincing to me - it's absolute numbers, it's not a zero-sum game, and besides LLM coding is the worst it's ever going to be. Hypothetically, even if the data was convincing (showing a massively increasing relative share of React usage since LLMs entered the scene), I don't think it's sensible to extrapolate from current trends about LLM coding anyway. This stuff is barely a few years old and we want to make confident predictions about it?
bubblyworld commented on The Geometry of Schemes [pdf]   webhomes.maths.ed.ac.uk/~... · Posted by u/measurablefunc
gsf_emergency_4 · a month ago
(Edited to be more helpful)

These days, some nerds prefer to ask AI to confirm their "precious" intuitions of why schemes might be needed in the first place. To fix the problems with certain basic geometric notions of old timers? They are then so spooked that the AI instantly validates those intuitions without any relevant citations whatsoever that they decide not to comment

But still leave warnings to gung-ho nerds in the form of low-code exercises

bubblyworld · a month ago
That's a theory, but I think it's more likely that the few people in the world who deeply understand schemes are locked in the basement of a mathematics department somewhere, and not on hacker news =P
bubblyworld commented on The Geometry of Schemes [pdf]   webhomes.maths.ed.ac.uk/~... · Posted by u/measurablefunc
nhatcher · a month ago
I have the same question in my mind. Also thrilled though. I think there is a genuine fascination in HN and in general with Grothendieck [1], [2].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Grothendieck [2]: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Grothendieck

bubblyworld · a month ago
Interesting, yeah. I guess he was the mathematical equivalent of the "rogue" archetype. Brilliant, did things in his own way, total lack of respect for authority, shrouded in mystery. I can definitely see the appeal =)
bubblyworld commented on Dead Framework Theory   aifoc.us/dead-framework-t... · Posted by u/jhuleatt
bubblyworld · a month ago
I don't buy it, I've used LLMs (well, mostly sonnet 4.5 and sometimes gpt5) in a variety of front-end frameworks (react, vue, htmx) and they do just fine. As usual, requires a lot of handholding and care to get good results, but I've found this is true for react codebases just as much as anything else.
bubblyworld commented on The Geometry of Schemes [pdf]   webhomes.maths.ed.ac.uk/~... · Posted by u/measurablefunc
bubblyworld · a month ago
Why is this on the front page of hacker news? Hopefully that comes across as a genuine question and not snark. I mean as an ex-mathematician I'm thrilled, but schemes are an incredibly abstract object used in an incredibly abstract branch of mathematics (algebraic geometry).

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KarmaCake day936May 30, 2020View Original