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Scaling long-running autonomous coding

cursor.com

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Re: Scaling long-running autonomous coding

#141

Post by snek_case »

datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #134
snek_case wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found the codebase very hard to navigate. Hundreds (over a thousand?) tiny files with less than 200 lines of code, in deeply nested subdirectories. I wanted to find where the JavaScript engine was, and where the DOM implementation was located, and I couldn't easily find it, even using the GitHub search feature. I'm not exactly sure what this browser implements and how. Even their README is kind of crappy. Ideally y…

To steelman the vibecoders’ perspective, I think the point is that the code is not meant for you to read. Anyone who has looked at AI art, read AI stories, listened to AI music, or really interacted with AI in any meaningfully critical way would recognize that this was the only predictable result given the current state of AI generated “content”. It’s extremely brittle, and collapses at the smallest bit of scrutiny.…

I've had AI write some very nice, readable code, but I make it go one function at a time.

Re: Scaling long-running autonomous coding

#142

Post by snek_case »

underdeserver wrote: post #122
embedding-shape wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's impressive that they got such a big project to be built by agents and to compile But that's the thing, it doesn't compile, has a ton of errors, CI seems broken since long... What exactly is supposed to impressive here, that it managed to generate a bunch of code that doesn't even compile? What in the holy hackers is this even about? Am I missing something obvious here? How is this news?

Looks like it doesn't compile for at least one other guy (I myself haven't tried): https://github.com/wilsonzlin/fastrender/issues/98 Yeah, answers need to be given.

Cursor is in the business of selling you more tokens, so it makes sense that they would exaggerate the capabilities of their models, and even advertise it being used to produce lots of code over weeks. This would probably cost you thousands in API usage fees.

Re: Scaling long-running autonomous coding

#144

Post by Snuggly73 »

The only thing that I got to actually run on WSL2 was the "Excel" (couldnt get anything actually to compile on Mac or Windows).

It a broken mess that probably implements 0.00001% of Excel. And its 1.2m locs.

With codebases developed in this way - either they need to figure out how agents are going to maintain them (in which case SWE as we know is dead - it will only be limited to those that can spend trillions of tokens, or they are going to remain weird demos.

Re: Scaling long-running autonomous coding

#145

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

snek_case wrote: post #141
datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To steelman the vibecoders’ perspective, I think the point is that the code is not meant for you to read. Anyone who has looked at AI art, read AI stories, listened to AI music, or really interacted with AI in any meaningfully critical way would recognize that this was the only predictable result given the current state of AI generated “content”. It’s extremely brittle, and collapses at the smallest bit of scrutiny.…

I've had AI write some very nice, readable code, but I make it go one function at a time.

Writing code one function at a time is not the the 100x speed up being hyped all over HN. I also write my code one function at a time, often assisted by various tools, some of them considered “AI”.

Writing code one function at a time is the furthest thing than what is being showcased in TFA.

Re: Scaling long-running autonomous coding

#146

Post by timabdulla »

Snuggly73 wrote: post #144

The only thing that I got to actually run on WSL2 was the "Excel" (couldnt get anything actually to compile on Mac or Windows). It a broken mess that probably implements 0.00001% of Excel. And its 1.2m locs. With codebases developed in this way - either they need to figure out how agents are going to maintain them (in which case SWE as we know is dead - it will only be limited to those that can spend trillions of tok…

I'd be curious to see screenshots or a video! I only have a Mac at my disposal, unfortunately.

Re: Scaling long-running autonomous coding

#147

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #137
datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To steelman the vibecoders’ perspective, I think the point is that the code is not meant for you to read. Anyone who has looked at AI art, read AI stories, listened to AI music, or really interacted with AI in any meaningfully critical way would recognize that this was the only predictable result given the current state of AI generated “content”. It’s extremely brittle, and collapses at the smallest bit of scrutiny.…

If it's not meant to be read, and not meant to be run since it doesn't compile and doesn't seem like it's been able to for quite some time, what is this mean to demonstrate? That agents can write a bunch of code by themselves? We already knew that, and what's even the point of that if the code doesn't work? I feel like I'm still missing what this entire project and blogpost is about. Is it supposed to be all theoreti…

You and me both, bud. I often feel these days that humanity has never had a more fractured reality, and worse, those fractures are very binary and tribal. I cope by trying to find fundamental truths that are supported by overwhelming evidence rather than focus on speculation.

I guess the fundamental truth that I’m working towards for generative AI is that it appears to have asymptotic performance with respect to recreating whatever it’s trying to recreate. That is, you can throw unlimited computing power and unlimited time at trying to recreate something, but there will still be a missing essence that separates the recreation from the creation. In very small snippets, and for very large compute, there may be reasonable results, but it will never be able to completely replace what can be created in meatspace by meatpeople.

Whether the economics of the tradeoff between “nearly recreated” and “properly created” is net positive is what I think this constant ongoing debate is about. I don’t think it’s ever going to be “it always makes sense to generate content instead of hire someone for this”, but rather a more dirty, “in this case, we should generate content”.

Re: Scaling long-running autonomous coding

#148

Post by seanc »

embedding-shape wrote: post #17

Did anyone manage to run the tests from the repository itself? The code seems filled with errors and warnings, as far as I can tell none of them because of the platform I'm on (Linux). I went and looked at the Action workflow history for some pages, and seems CI been failing for a while, PRs also all been failing CI but merged. How exactly was this verified to be something to be used as an successful example, or am I…

Code filled with errors and warnings? PR's merged with failing CI?

So I guess they've achieved human parity then?

(I'll see myself out)

Re: Scaling long-running autonomous coding

#149

Post by bouk »

afishhh wrote: post #132
simonw wrote: post #3

"To test this system, we pointed it at an ambitious goal: building a web browser from scratch." I shared my LLM predictions last week, and one of them was that by 2029 "Someone will build a new browser using mainly AI-assisted coding and it won’t even be a surprise" https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/8/llm-predictions-for-202... and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVDhQMiAbR8&t=3913s This project from Cursor is the s…

> The other is this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/Anthropic/comments/1q4xfm0/over_chr... I took a 5-minute look at the layout crate here and... it doesn't look great: 1. Line height calculation is suspicious, the structure of the implementation also suggests inline spans aren't handled remotely correctly 2. Uhm... where is the bidi? Directionality has far reaching implications on an inline layout engine's design. Thi…

Sure, but getting this far would be inconceivable just half a year ago. It will only get better as time passes

Re: Scaling long-running autonomous coding

#150

Post by Snuggly73 »

And there is the thing about the cost. The blog post says that they've spent trillions (plural!) of tokens on that experiment.

Looking at OAI API pricing, 5.2 Codex is $14 per 1 million output tokens. Which makes cool $14m for 1 trillion tokens (multiplied by whatever the plural is). For something that "kind of works".

Its a nice ad for OAI and Anysphere, but maybe next time - just donate the money to a browser team?

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