The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - Dalai, InputOutput.dev, Wik, Rspack, Doodle, Marqo & iLLA (News)

Episode Date: March 13, 2023

Dalai is the simplest way to run LLaMA on your local machine, simple web tools that just work without annoying you, Wik is a tool to view wikipedia pages from your terminal, Rspack is a fast, Rust-based web bundler, Doodle is a pure Kotlin UI framework, Marqo is tensor search for humans & iLLA is an open source alternative to Retool.

What up, nerds? Yo! What's up? I'm Jared, and this is Changelog News for the week of Monday, March 13th, 2023. It's been a frantic week in the software world, to say the least. Many of our friends, partners, and listeners were jolted by the FDIC's takeover of Silicon Valley Bank on Friday. Thankfully, it appears the worst of all possible outcomes has been avoided. Yesterday, in a joint statement by the U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve, and FDIC,

they announced that all depositors will have access to all of their money starting today and that no losses associated with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank will be borne by the taxpayer. Okay, that's a quick financial update. I'm not super qualified to go deeper than that. Here's your software update. Most of the moving and shaking of late has been around large language models. Surprised? You hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability. Facebook Research recently released LAMA, a foundational 65 billion parameter large language model. Alongside the model itself, they published some example code which demonstrates loading the

model and running inference in Python. With that in hand, Georgi Gerganov coded up llama.cpp. If that name sounds familiar, it's because I've referenced Georgi's work on whisper.cpp and the fact that he's coming on the changelog soon, which is even more exciting now than it was last time I said it. Llama.cpp runs Llama inference using 4-bit quantization on a MacBook. It was hacked in an evening, but that didn't stop curious devs from downloading Georgie's code and running it on their desktops, laptops, Raspberry Pis, and even a Pixel 6 phone. Our friend Simon Willison, who is also scheduled to come back on the show soon, said this about it. Quote, it's now possible to run a genuinely interesting large language model on a consumer laptop. I thought it would be at least another year or two before we got there, if not longer.

End quote. But it doesn't stop there. GitHub user CocktailPeanut combined Llama.cpp and LlamaDL, a script that does high-speed downloads of Llama, to create Dali Llama. The Dali Llama.cpp and LlamaDL, a script that does high-speed downloads of Llama, to create DALI Llama. The DALI Llama himself. DALI is the simplest way to run Llama on your local machine. Just run npx dollay llama, followed by npx dollay server, and visit localhost 3000 to launch a hackable web app that takes input

and starts auto-completing from there. Big hitter. Banana. Here's a cool website you should know about, inputoutput.dev. It's a bunch of simple web tools with no pop-ups, no cookies, no tracking, all under 14 kilobytes in size and working without JavaScript. The site currently provides unit converters, random number generators, text manipulation tools, and a whole bunch of

Unicode generators. The site's creator, Nathaniel, says this about it, quote, everyone should be able to use the internet to perform basic tasks without being bombarded with pop-ups, compromising their privacy and security, or damaging the environment. End quote. I agree, Nathaniel. Cool stuff. Question. Do you like Wikipedia? If you answered no, skip to the next chapter. Question. Do you like the terminal?

If you answered no, skip to the next chapter. Okay, now that you've chosen this adventure, I will tell you all about WIC, a tool to view Wikipedia pages from your terminal. It's written in Python, so pip install wic, then pass it the appropriate flag. Dash i if you want the entire article, dash q if you just want a quick summary, dash s to search any topic, and dash X if you're feeling lucky and want to read a random Wikipedia article. You could ask yourself a question. Do I feel lucky? Well, do you, punk? RSPAC is the latest entry in the growing list of JavaScript tooling that isn't powered by

JavaScript. Launching on March 10th, R-SPAC combines TypeScript and Rust with a parallelized architecture in an attempt to bring front-enders the ultimate developer experience. R-SPAC is led by a team of devs at ByteDance, and I was very impressed by the list of credits they included in the readme, shouting out to Webpack, SWC, ESBuild, Parcel, Vite, TurboPack, and other projects that came before and inspired RSPAC's design. The benchmark provided shows RSPAC beating out WebPack with SWC by a factor of 10 when running with a cold start on 50,000 modules.

I feel the need, the need for speed. Ow! It's time once again for a lightning round. This week's list, things that have been submitted to Changelog News that might be cool, but I don't know. It's a tough call. They're interesting for sure, but are they good? You decide. Up first, Doodle, a pure Kotlin UI framework. It's expressive with powerful vector-oriented rendering, fully customizable layouts, and simple pointer and keyboard handling. It's single language with apps written entirely in Kotlin, no CSS or JS libraries necessary.

And it's multi-platform, targeting the browser with JS and the JVM using common widgets and business logic. Next up, Marco, a tensor-based search and analytics engine that seamlessly integrates with your applications, websites, and workflows. They call it Tensor Search for Humans. It's open source, but also has a cloud offering so you can scale seamlessly. Last but not least, Illa, an open source alternative to Retool with low-code UI components and support for multiple data resources. Build internal tools in minutes and run them on your self-hosted Illa infrastructure or Illa Cloud. Thus ends our lightning round for this week. If you want your project to be featured, submit it via the form at changelog.com slash submit.

That's the news for now. Wednesday on the Changelog, we deliver on our previously mentioned Nathan Sobo interview. Nathan was the primary dev on the Atom editor inside GitHub, and now he's back with a brand new high-performance multiplayer code editor called Zed. I've been using Zed since last week when we talked, and I'm not going to lie, I may have finally found a replacement for a sublime text. It's early days, but it's pretty great so far. Stay tuned for that conversation with Nathan. It's a good one. Have a great week. Share the show if you dig it, and we'll talk to you again real soon.