The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - DeepSeek-R1's epic pull request (News)

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

Xuan-Son Nguyen opened a low-level code PR written 99% by DeepSeek-R1, Adam Wathan announces the release of Tailwind CSS 4.0, Matheus Lima opens up the Computer Science history books to create list of influential papers, Namanyay Goel thinks AI is creating a generation of illiterate programmers & Russell Baylis shares what he's learned about optimizing WFH lighting to reduce eye strain.

What up nerds, I'm Jared and this is ChangeLog News for the week of Monday, January 27th, 2024. On one hand, there's the Stargate project, a joint venture by OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and Friends that's aimed at investing $500 billion over four years to build out infrastructure that will, quote, secure American leadership in AI. On the other hand, there's DeepSeek R1, a Chinese AI lab's MIT-licensed reasoning model that gives OpenAI's O1 a run for its money and only cost $5.6 million to train. It's big money versus big brain. I'm jealous of both.

Okay, let's get into this week's news. DeepSeek R1's epic pull request. Speaking of big brain, Zan Sun Nguyen opened a pull request to Georgi Gaganov's Lama.cpp repo that doubles the speed of Wasm by optimizing SIMD instructions with the following PR comment. Quote, surprisingly, 99% of the code in this PR is written by DeepSeek R1. The only thing I do is to develop tests and write prompts with some trials and errors. Indeed, this PR aims to prove that LLMs are now capable of writing good, low-level code to a point that it can optimize its own code. End quote.

I can't judge whether this is good low-level code or not because I don't know what good low-level code looks like. But Gyorgy and Zan Sun sure are impressed. Zan Sun also shared the prompts they used to get the desired results. This, of course, resulted in a long X thread where both humans and robots debate and meme whether or not it's over for folks like us or not quite yet. Tailwind CSS version 4 is official. Here's Adam Wavin. Quote, Tailwind CSS

version 4 is an all-new version of the framework optimized for performance and flexibility with a reimagined configuration and customization experience, and taking full advantage of the latest advancements the web platform has to offer. End quote. This looks like it was a massive undertaking. It has a new high-performance build engine, simplified installation, automatic content detection,

reimagined CSS-first config, and too much more to list here. The most influential papers in computer science history. Matthias Lima opens up the history books to create this admittedly subjective list of influential papers dating all the way back to 1936. Quote, these seven papers, sorted by date, stand out to me mostly because of their impact in today's world. For each paper, Matthias provides the big idea and why he thinks it still matters to this day.

Here's the quick list. 1. On Computable Numbers with an Application to the N-Scheidenzahn Problem by Alan Turing in 1936. 2. A Mathematical Theory of Communication, by Claude Shannon, 1948. Three, A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Databanks, Edgar F. Codd, 1970. Four, The Complexity of Theorem-Proving Procedures, Stephen A. Cook, 1971.

Five, A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication, Vinton G. Cerji Surf and Robert E. Kahn, 1974. Six, Information Management, A Proposal by Tim Berners-Lee, 1989. And seven, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, 1998. He also provides a bonus list of five papers that almost made the list, finishing with this, quote, These days, we are flooded with new stuff. Fresh languages, mind-blowing AI breakthroughs, quantum leaps,

and the JavaScript framework of the week. It's all super exciting, but here's the thing. Foundations matter. Without them, we're just piling on new toys without fully understanding the ground we're building on. It's now time for sponsored news. Replay 2025 in London, March 3rd through 5th. Our friends at Temporal invite you to replay in London, March 3rd through 5th to break free from the status quo. Replay 25 is an in-person conference focused on transitioning away from outdated, monolithic systems and methodologies to embrace cutting-edge technologies.

Immerse yourself in two days of technical talks from back-end software engineering leaders at top organizations. Then, enjoy connecting on day three at the afterparty. Live it up, connect, and continue conversations with food, drinks, and fun. at top organizations. Then enjoy connecting on day three at the after party. Live it up, connect, and continue conversations with food, drinks, and fun alongside your replay community. Early bird tickets are on sale now. Early bird pricing ends January 31st,

which is right around the corner. So get your ticket soon if you plan to attend. Learn more and register at replay.temporal.io. AI is creating a generation of illiterate programmers. Nemanje Goel has a confession to make. Quote, a couple of days ago, cursor went down during the chat GPT outage. I stared at my terminal facing those red error messages that I hate to see. An AWS error glared back at me. I didn't want to figure it out without AI's help. After 12 years of coding, I'd somehow become worse at my own craft. And this isn't hyperbole. This is the new reality for software developers. End quote. He doesn't think

he's the only one who's become a human clipboard, a mere intermediary between his code and an LLM. Quote, we're not becoming 10x developers with AI, we're becoming 10x dependent on AI. There's a difference. Every time we let AI solve a problem, we could have solved ourselves. We are trading long-term understanding for short-term productivity.

We are optimizing for today's commit at the cost of tomorrow's ability. End quote. Does this sentiment resonate with you? If so, see also a linked recent paper on metacognitive laziness. How to improve work from home lighting to reduce eye strain. Russell Bayless is not an ergonomist or optometrist. He's just a worker from Homer who is susceptible to eye strain, eye pain, and dizziness. In the linked post, Russell shares what he's learned about optimizing home lighting to reduce eye strain. Here's the quick list.

1. An even, diffused lighting environment is the best for the eyes. 2. When it comes to light brightness, too much is just as problematic as too little. 3. Use natural light wherever possible. 4. Quality of artificial light matters. Five, the best lighting for camera is not necessarily the best lighting for ergonomics. And six, even the perfect lighting environment will fatigue you. Take breaks and take care of yourself. Click through to see renderings of the changes he made to his environment and steal some of these ideas to improve your work-from-home life just like he did. That's the news for now, but also join the 23,000 bright, incredibly good-looking people

who subscribe to our companion newsletter for even more news worth your attention, such as you probably don't need query builders, a great primer on Kalman filters, and build your own air tags with OpenHaystack. Get in on it at changelog.com slash news. In case you missed it, last week we published two great shows, Ashley Jeff's Ongoing from Open Source to Acquired, one listener called it very funny, and a great guest choice plus

interesting story. And of course, we had fallout boy, I mean, fall through boys, Chris Brando and Matthew Sanabria joining me on changelogging friends to discuss tools for switching to, whether or not Go is still a great systems programming language choice, user-centric documentation, the need for archivists, and more.

Find those in your feed and look forward to this week when we are joined on Wednesday by Glober Costa to talk about Limbo, a complete rewrite of Sequelite in Rust, and on Friday by Dan Moore for an It Depends style conversation on modern auth strategies. Have a great week. Leave us a five-star review if you dig the show, and I'll talk to you again real soon.