Best of luck with this but I think with so many open source agent managers cropping up, you are going to need to provide very special USP to have people choose yours over the free and open versions.
I guess I would suggest that should be a priority for your site and documentation, to help devs understand what that value offer is.
Your site does seem nicely presented though and clarity in capability is possibly an early win over some of the more chaotic documentation elsewhere.
> Best of luck with this but I think with so many open source agent managers cropping up
What’s the top 5 (or any N) that come to mind:
A) GUI based
B) terminal based
C) web based?
Like, not just personal projects but something with a bit of a community around it? I remember Conductor from a bit ago (seems only Mac is supported) and a few other HN posts but all of those seemed smaller and more barebones. Oh I guess OpenCode also has a desktop and web version, but it never worked well for me (and I need something that can just use headless Claude Code instances).
Asking because I just use Claude Code desktop for organizing my sessions and am a bit behind in that regard - if there are indeed many options that others can vouch for somewhat, I’d love to hear about them!
Edit: apparently there is Cmux (Mac only), T3 Code (very new), Agent Orchestrator (tries to be a weird kanban board), Agor (tries to be a weird canvas board) and Claude Squad (TUI only), but none of those are quite what I'm looking for. If there's all that many options, I might have missed most of them - since Baton or OpenCode (a revisit of it) seem more like what I'd be looking for, maybe Conductor if not Mac only.
I think this is pretty common across different creative forms albeit with different age ranges but constrained at the higher end.
So the greatest physics, maths, poetry and pop music are done by people in their 20s.
Literature (esp novels) seems to occupy an older range, perhaps 30s to 50s. Perhaps classical music and philosophy also? I don't know about the visual arts.
I interpret it as the former requiring the creative fireworks of youthful neural elasticity and the latter the depth we associate with lived experience and wisdom.
Naturally there are outliers (general relativity in Einstein's early 30s, Shakespeare word play till his late 40s) but I think in general these rules of thumb seem to be a good guide for the very highest achievers and for the most creative periods for us mere mortals.
I think a lot is driven by environmental rather than genetic factors. For instance the article mentions that both The Road, and No Country for Old Men were written when Cormack was in his 70s. But very few people in their 70s are even trying to write, let alone get published.
I think there's something similar in chess where players tend to peak around their mid to late 30s. But a major issue there is that that's also the age that most players are having children and developing ever more interests. And they're competing against the younger generation which is still dedicating 100% of their life, and time, to chess. Absent some monumental edge, that's a battle you're going to inevitably lose - even if aging factors did not exist.
Yeah. there is some obvious logic that one can use here without having to look at data.
Not everyone survives to write to an old age.
Old people have health problems that can prevent them from work, like going blind.
People who write a great work at an old age will not have the time and energy to do all the non-writing parts of making the great work seen by readers - which has always been a big part of writing. Like getting their book in bookstores, advertising it, etc.
If someone is a very talented writer they are likely to write great stuff before they get old and may spend their old age preening and working on their legacy instead of new works. They will already know they're a great writer, so the drive to make another great work is lessened.
If someone is already an accomplished writer more of their time will be taken up with invitations to speak, being on award panels, doing interviews, writing introductions.
There is less financial incentive to write a great work when you're very old.
It is harder to be part of a literary salon full of smart people that help you grow your creativity when you're very old.
As people grow older they become more alienated from the zeitgeist and are better at connecting with their own generation.
What do you think caused you to stop caring as much? I’ve been becoming more aware of my finitude recently for a variety of reasons relating to middle-age and having kids. A side effect of that is definitely caring less about lots of things in order to focus on others. But I have an internal battle going on with the part of me that says I should still be ambitious and make a dent in the world.
For me at least you hit exactly on it - shifting priorities. I never imagined how quickly life flies by, and it only seems to move even faster as we grow more grey, so my interest has become more on my children and basically turning them into 'little mes', but ideally even better. Then they can have their go at the same game with some better guidance.
Everything we personally do will mostly be forgotten in short order in basically all cases. Even the exceptions do little more than stretch out the timeline by a bit. Jeff Bezos of tomorrow will be the John Astor of today; many, if not most, young developers have never even heard of John Carmack. The only real legacy we can ever truly have is our children, because they will be the humanity of tomorrow.
It's very clear from looking at chess, but also e.g. online gaming and sports that people in their 20s have the strongest cognitive capabilities, especially "processing speed".
But on the other hand, the world is very complicated and you can't know much in your 20s.
I'm today a much better programmer than 10 years ago, even with slightly less brains.
You are not going to write an impactfull novel without live experience.
How that declines varies and some people still have most cognitive capabilities in their 70s.
100% true about chess but I think there's more nuance to it.
In 6th grade, I had gone to a chess coach who were a friend of my father (technically my father knew his father very well). It was my birthday/a day close to it IIRC and I wanted to learn chess. He was an international-master (or close to it) /National-master (I think he just had one norm less) and he told me about his story and everything, but he said that in a way, he does feel like if he had put the efforts within something like finance for example, he really could earn more than 10 times the money but he said that he really loved chess with a passion. I think that is another element and I think he was within his 30's. Not everyone makes it even that big within chess aside from a very few at the top
You are sort of right in the manner that, as teens grow and the focus of life/dedication from teenage years on solely getting good at chess, diversifies into for example relationships/money-aspects, the mind simply doesn't have enough competition to play chess Comparing this to a 18 year old or 17 year old who just wants to get best at chess and doesn't really want anything else other than chess with their complete and utter dedication.
(There is also another theory recently within Chess of the pressures of being the world champion, from Ding Liren to Gukesh, both have faced tremendous losses after being the best, Gukesh has even lost 75 points after being the world champion, which I believe also has to be because of how many eyes/the pressure building up)
I still like playing chess but all of this makes me also appreciate all the chess players as well in a bit-more behind the scenes manner too. At professional level, calling it taxing sport mentally might even be a bit of an understatement especially for the people within their 30's.
another thing I personally like about Ding and Gukesh both is that they are both humble. They might win or lose but with the brief time that they both had/will have the crown is with their own humbleness. I really like them both a lot. Hope history remembers both their struggles and their humbleness.
Magnus Carlsen is still absolutely destroying anyone else in his 30s. By far.
He didn't compete for the world champion becaue he didn't want to put in the effort for the preparation (again). Also it would have been boring if he played it because he would have won again.
He intentionally starts with subobtimal openings at major turnaments because of boredom and still wins.
Magnus played 5 world chess championships. 2 games he played against the previous generation of players who were already well on their way out, and did phenomenally well. 1 game he played against Nepo in a completely even match until Nepo lost one game and went on his somewhat infamous monkey tilt. The other 2 games were against players of his generation. In the 24 games of those matches he ended up with a score of +1 =22 -1. And he was never the one pressing in the classical matches.
Carlsen's paradoxical because he's undoubtedly the strongest player in contemporary times, if not in the entire history of chess, but his world championship matches have never been particularly impressive. And he thinks that his ability peaked sometime shortly before his match with Nepo. So he probably thinks there's a fairly good chance of him losing if he played another world championship match.
On top of these observations, the one player he was willing to play a world championship match against was Alireza Firouzja. Alireza has an extremely poor record against Magnus, especially in slower time controls, had no experience in the pressures of a world championship match, and Magnus would have been an absurdly huge favorite against him.
In other words, he's not playing a world championship matches because there's a reasonably good chance he spends months of work and effort preparing for it, only to ultimately lose and put that mark on his legacy. Right now it's still perfectly reasonable to call him the GOAT, but if he lost to somebody in a WCC match, that'd now always come with an asterisk.
Yes, magnus carlsen is a legendary player/the best player right now, there isn't much denying about it.
Regarding boredom, I think that either it was magnus or hikaru who are/were really optimistic about chess960 (randomized chess essentially) because they have less value to openings and more values to the more live-ness of the situation so it has some exciting element to it.
At a certain point for magnus, there really is only enough excitement within classical chess if you are the best players in the world. But he seems excited about chess960
(Edit: you have accidentally made me wonder but would hackernews like a chess club of our community [preferably within lichess]?) https://lichess.org/team/hackernews-chess-club (The password is dang) :]
Edit2: Interestingly, there is already a hackernews-chess-club after searching back on hackernews, https://lichess.org/team/hacker-news, but they had the idea 6 years ago interesting :)
The best works of Bach and Beethoven are from later in their life, although neither lived to be 85 (65 and 57, respectively), and also wrote great works in their younger years. Bruckner kept improving with age. There are also composers who lost it at a later age: Ravel, famously. Classical music is difficult, so experience does allow a better overall view, something which a lot of short works (such as pop songs) don't need.
If I remember correctly. Bach had about 20 children and he dedicated a lot of his time to their education. A few became very successful musicians. It is an example than later in life a lot of our value is not so much on doing, but helping form the new generations.
Ravel wrote his most famous work, Bolero, after age 50, and suffered a traumatic head injury a few years later. Not a good example, except perhaps that the odds of bad things happening increase with longevity.
He wasn't happy with the Bolero, and it certainly wasn't his best work. The piano concerto in G was also late, and that's definitely better. I didn't know about the head trauma.
b) there is no breakdown into theoretical vs experimental research, or scientific field; theory I would expect to be over-represented at the younger end especially as the science discipline becomes "harder".
Overall I would say it lends credence to the idea physics is a young person's game at the very highest levels.
a) the inflection point is in the high 30s. Further $\int_{40}^{50} f(x) dx > \int_{20}^{30} f(x) dx$.
b) true there is no breakdown but I would expect the exact opposite as fields get harder. More context requires more training and familiarity, which I would expect to increase age.
My point is that I think there's a bias in the field towards the youth narrative but the majority of discovery, even in physics, happens at a later age.
I don't think there is a bias in the field towards a youth narrative. I think there is a bias in the media.
Nobody I've ever met would expect a breakthrough from a 20 something year old no matter how much of a genius they are. Communicating a breakthrough requires time, effort, and credibility to begin with, which nobody has at that age.
Your 30's are when you can start to really do great things. And then depending on the field you can kind of just keep going as long as you have the energy for it. But lots of people begin to wear out into their 40's (for lots of different reasons).
In terms of great breakthroughs. If you haven't had your great idea by 40. It's probably increasingly unlikely that you'll have one later in life (but not impossible). Not everyone needs to have a paradigm changing idea to have a successful career though.
On the bright side, most of us were never candidates for inventing relativity, really. I wonder if our mediocrity remains stable, of if we lose a proportional amount of capability as the luminaries did.
I think pop musicians are capable of doing greater works later, but the perception of pop works are so heavily influenced by the image/presentation of the artist that we view the works as lesser. I don't think there is something fundamentally different about pop music that leads to best works being earlier relative to other genres of music beyond that.
If we limit the definition of pop music to what charts I think it makes all the sense in the world that it is a young person’s game. So much of what drives chart success is what is in fashion at the time. Trend setting will always be the domain of youngsters.
If we expand the definition of pop music to all music that isn’t classical/jazz/experimental, etc. then older, more experienced musicians should be able to do quite well. Frank Sinatra honed his craft over the decades. I think the stuff he did in his 40s and 50s is probably his best.
> So much of what drives chart success is what is in fashion at the time. Trend setting will always be the domain of youngsters.
I would suggest it's more the demands of poverty that make it a young person's game. So, so, so many pop musicians were "I was living in squalor for a decade plus was extremely depressed and was about to hang it up when <thing happened> and we got popular." Huey Lewis, Annie Lennox, ... I can go on and on.
There was a metal artist that was being interviewed about when they were going to tour again and was "Yeah, we'll consider it. But I've got a lot of work at my tattoo business right now." There was another guy that was like "Yeah, had this fame hit in our 20s this would be nice but in our late 30s it isn't really useful. We figured out how to do life by now, and we're not going to disrupt that."
> So the greatest physics, maths, poetry and pop music are done by people in their 20s.
I think there's a chance this is itself a type of selection bias, because you're over-indexing on the famous. And fame has consequences.
Many music artists end up trapped by their own fame (and attendant expectations) and fail to update themselves over time, thus falling out of the limelight. But there are plenty who defy this trend. Tiesto, David Guetta, Kaskade, and Armin van Buuren in EDM, for example. Coldplay is another great example. Love them or hate them, they're still putting out chart toppers.
Something similar is true for scientists in my opinion. I think Richard Hamming had the most incisive analysis of this in 'You and Your Research' [1], which is worth reading in its entirety.
> But let me say why age seems to have the effect it does. In the first place if you do some good work you will find yourself on all kinds of committees and unable to do any more work. You may find yourself as I saw Brattain when he got a Nobel Prize. The day the prize was announced we all assembled in Arnold Auditorium; all three winners got up and made speeches. The third one, Brattain, practically with tears in his eyes, said, “I know about this Nobel-Prize effect and I am not going to let it affect me; I am going to remain good old Walter Brattain.” Well I said to myself, “That is nice.” But in a few weeks I saw it was affecting him. Now he could only work on great problems.
> When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off. And that isn't the way things go. So that is another reason why you find that when you get early recognition it seems to sterilize you. In fact I will give you my favorite quotation of many years. The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, in my opinion, has ruined more good scientists than any institution has created, judged by what they did before they came and judged by what they did after. Not that they weren't good afterwards, but they were superb before they got there and were only good afterwards.
My view is that fatalistically assuming that age is an obstacle to creative output obscures the hidden variables that are genuinely determinative.
I think there's a chance this is itself a type of selection bias, because you're over-indexing on the famous
Not in this case, no, at least as far as the music goes.
My user-name here is taken from a Northern Soul record as its the music that means the most to me. The genre is obscure almost by definition.
I would guesstimate the proportion of the hundreds (thousands?) of records so classified and celebrated made by people under 30 to be over 95% and that correlates with my (admittedly subjective) experience of the best music of other pop genres.
> I interpret it as the former requiring the creative fireworks of youthful neural elasticity and the latter the depth we associate with lived experience and wisdom.
That being said, I think an interesting factor would also be which of those who wrote major works in their later age already did a decent amount of writing in their earlier years. Even if you have life experience, I would imagine that you will have to build up the "muscle memory" of writing skills in your more elastic years (e.g. by becoming a successful writer after a lifetime of journalistic work or just minor literary works).
Yeah there are quite a few exceptions to this. I've been (re-)reading The Making of the Atomic Bomb, and two of the four people directly involved in the discovery and explanation of nuclear fission were 60 (Hahn and Meitner) the other two (Frisch and Strassman) were in their mid-to-late 30s. Shortly after, Bohr (53) figured out that the oddities of uranium's fission behavior were due to the different activation energies of U-235 and U-238.
I think the best place to look for major works late in life is probably historical writing, which calls for accumulated knowledge and wisdom. Looking at the four most recent winners of the Pulitzer Prize in history from 2023-2025 [0], all appear to be north of 50 based on their Wikipedia pages (which give dates of education if not dates of birth), and one is in her 70s [1].
> So the greatest physics, maths, poetry and pop music are done by people in their 20s.
I can, just from feeling, agree to the pop music. About math I would cite the example of Gilbert Strang, who made many books at advanced age, including one at age 86 or other publications well over the 70s. Another example (well not math, but CS) Donald Knuth. I do not know how is the whole statistic, but writing good books, even text books, does not seem to be teenager thing.
NB. This article could have been written under any recent administration (and no doubt was published in different forms).
I don't mean it's politically motivated or that the current admin shouldn't be criticized; the authors have legitimate economic views and concerns that follow - but the title is clickbait and shouldn't be used to infer something new is happening.
Really nice article, thanks - yes I found the same myself recently when trying to write a trivial (I thought) Windows app.
I first investigated the Windows native options and was pretty bamboozled; I wanted to use the "mainstream" "up to date" option (presumably c# and some framework) but as TFA describes, it wasn't at all clear which that was.
I ended up doing it in python with pyqt then finding out a clean deployment was a pain, so revisited the .Net options and remembered why I'd discarded them in the first place...
It is indeed a complete mess (at least coming in anew) and a very strange situation for the world's main desktop environment to be in.
I guess I would suggest that should be a priority for your site and documentation, to help devs understand what that value offer is.
Your site does seem nicely presented though and clarity in capability is possibly an early win over some of the more chaotic documentation elsewhere.
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