How is this encouraging? They're sticking their heads in the sand and dooming themselves to irrelevance. All but the most strongly and wrongly ideologically motivated will contribute to other projects like LLVM when GCC asks them to code with rocks and sticks instead of taking advantage of arguably the most important invention in human history.
It's an invention that can invent things on its own, improve itself, do research, etc. The importance of such a thing should be obvious. The hockey stick that's coming for human progress overall is going to make the industrial revolution look like a flatline.
More important than the invention of writing, the printing press, electricity, the computer or the internet?
> The hockey stick that's coming for human progress overall is going to make the industrial revolution look like a flatline.
So far the effect on human progress has been pretty modest, I dare say. At the moment I would even regard it as a net negative on society. Maybe let's wait a few years before making such grand assessments.
