Info dump on Bend, HOC, next steps, etc.
I'm preparing my trip to SF for the $20m raise.
Plan is to have 2 internal teams:
- BendCore: Bend's theory, compiler, ecosystems, adoption, etc.
- SupGen: internal symbolic AI R&D (goal: GD-free GPT-3)
Below are some ways on which the language will improve.
Proof Kernel:
- fully rewritten in Bend (no more TypeScript)
- support for live λ contraction (largest Lean expressivity gap)
- funext + univalence (most likely HOTT-like, NOT cubical)
- perhaps bring self types back from Kind; they're powerful
- of course, all that must be justified by the formalization
Compiler:
- fully rewritten in Bend (no more TypeScript)
- keep improving in all directions. faster, safer, better
- target HTML apps (WASM + WebGPU) and AMD GPUs
- support for clustering, so it runs on 8x DGX B300 etc.
- way better support for shared atomic arrays
- more parallelism options (not just fork/join)
- apps must run identically on desktop, server, web, mobile
- all use cases of CUDA & Metal must be reproducible in Bend
Ecosystem:
- a 3d game engine, Unreal level
- AI framework / PyTorch / llama.bend / etc.
- full blown crypto libraries
- full blown networking libraries
- every database / api integration
- all good parts of mathlib, npm, hackage should be in Bend
- anything else the community asks for
The teams will be small and focused. We'll ship all these things with world-class quality, because we will heavily use AI inference, guarded by Bend's LAWS, to grow our own ecosystem, to the point it becomes the largest and most compelling language to use. Bend 2 launch is just the first stage. What matters is how it scales. It is a language evolved by AI, secured by math. That's Bend's thesis.
I'm also merging StudioVibi and HOC. Vibi will be a sub-team on the BendCore team, responsible for building vibe-coded games with Bend. That makes sense since we'll be maintaining our own 3D game engine now.
Also, we've recently published BendHub. Access it on BendLang's website. You can now publish a named, versioned library for other people to use, and there is even a "mini hacker news" on Bend's landing page, so you can discover and post packages, and upvote, downvote, and discuss them. This is just a first step.
You can also finally spend Bend Credits on something: a namespace. Not the most compelling use case (BendAI, or whatever we call it, will be the main one). But it is the first use for it.
I also should talk about Bend Credits quickly. These should be seen as the Robux of Bend's ecosystem. You will be able to use it for everything that HOC produces. For example, once we ship games, these same Bend Credits will be spendable on in-game assets. If we launch Kindelia, Bend Credits will be convertible. And, of course, once we have our models, and SupGen, this is how you'll have access to them.
You can buy Bend Credits in our website today, at a time-limited 50% founder discount. If you do buy them, please keep in mind there isn't much use for it yet, but you can expect more to come. We sold ~$3.5k so far 🥳 I'm very thankful to these who bought, despite the limited applications. That's basically the first time HOC makes any money lol
On adoption. This month, we had more installs than Zigs on Homebrew, which is kinda nice, but not really expressive given it was a launch. Roughly 400 distinct non-cloud IPs use the Bend command every day, and that number seems to be stable. I have no idea what this means but looks low, so I'll keep working to make Bend more useful and to let it be seen by way more people.
I like Bend's AI+LAWS evolutionary idea, because it dogfoods Bend's own thesis. If it works, the ecosystem will grow at an unprecedented rate - faster than any other language to ever exist. And that will make it way more useful and compelling to use. If it doesn't, then that means the entire thesis behind Bend itself wasn't that good to begin with, and the language thereby deserves to die anyway. Makes sense, doesn't it? I can't wait to see this play at scale.
That's all for now bye