- A really simple one is traversing a linked list (or any naturally recursive data structure, such as a dictionary or tree). It is very natural to traverse a recursive data structure recursively.
- Really impressive! For anyone who's not a pythonista, trying to implement TCO is something akin to solving the Collatz conjecture but for Python. It's often just an exercise in madness. So seeing an elegant solution to this is really cool, I myself was a victim of this madness and was unable to do it so very cool to see someone nail it! This will be a goto tool for sure.
- Ok hear me out. It's not particularly obvious to me why plants being easy to replicate suddenly destroyed the rare plant market. Surely they can't be easier to replicate than software. That hasn't seemed to put much of a dent in the software market.
- No, and its ok to be dismissive of it. I'm just giving an experience report.
Actually my primary value is emacs integration with claude.
I have an mcp with one function ( as_user_eval ) which allows it to execute arbitrary s-expressions against the portal package for emacs.
I use this often with custom slash commands, i.e., `/read-emacs`, which instructs claude to use that mcp to pull the context from multiple pseudoregions in to the context window (along with filenames and line numbers). This saves me from having to copy paste all of that.
I understand what the others are saying but the using the portal to talk to a running emacs client I don't find to be particularly "discoverable" on the cli.
I can say things like, "show me in emacs the test that failed", or, "highlight the lines you are talking about", or, "interactively remap my keybindings to do X", or, "take me to the info page that covers this topic".
This, paired with chrome devtools and playwright, had been a real productivity booster for me, and is quite fun.
I use voice dictation for this so it feels like I'm in Star Trek :)
I'm sure in 10 minutes we will be onto the next version of MCP... skills, ACP, Tools, whatever.
But this extensibility/discoverability for me has been nice. I make no stronger claims than that about "what it is for" or "what is should be", as I am a simple hacker with simple needs.
- Chrome Devtools is similarly an extremely high value MCP for me.
I would agree that if you don't find they add discoverability then MCPs would have no value for you and be worse than cli tools. It sounds like we have had very opposite experiences here.
- So I don't disagree with any of the criticisms of MCPs but no one here has mentioned why they are useful, and I'm not sure that everyone is aware that MCP is actually just a wrapper over existing cli/API:
1. Claude Code is aware of what MCPs it has access to at all times.
2. Adding an MCP is like adding to the agent's actuators/vocabulary/tools because unlike cli tools or APIs you don't have to constantly remind it what MCPs it has available and "hey you have access to X" and "hey make an MCP for X" take the same level of effort on the part of the user.
3. This effect is _significantly_ stronger than putting info about available API/cli into CLAUDE.md.
4. You can almost trivially create an MCP that does X by asking the agent to create an MCP that does X. This saves you from having to constantly remind an agent it can do X.
NOTE: I cannot stress enough that this property of MCPs is COMPLETELY ORTHOGONAL to the nutty way they are implemented, and I am IN NO WAY defending the implementation. But currently we are talking past the primary value prop.
I would personally prefer some other method but having a way to make agents extensible is extremely useful.
EXAMPLE:
"Make a bash script that does X."
<test manually to make sure it works>
"Now make an MCP called Xtool that uses X."
<restart claude>
<claude is now aware it can do Xtool>
- Taking the article's analogy of the "collaboration while driving", the F1 sport is quite insanely collaborative. For example, the drivers literally do have someone in their ear by radio being their coach and spotter for the entire trip. I've never heard of the equivalent in software. Does anyone know of anything like this?
- Not the type theory we wanted, but the type theory we needed.
- Comments here are a bit rough. Marcin does plenty of work for OSE and the community is still active but most of it is in-person/offline -- hard for a lot of us to believe, I know, but there is human activity that takes place outside the internet.
Or so I'm told.
- Ok to be fair the eagle looks just as confused and distressed to be there as the rest of us
- I... what? Guys I think .gov got hacked. Cause the alternative is we are on the weird timeline. Can someone confirm we are not on the weird timeline?
- I am actually surprised how well it runs, given how solid it is
Sure go ahead and roast me but please include full proof method you use to make sure that never happens that still allows you to use credentials for developing applications in the normal way.