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I built a programming language using Claude Code

ankursethi.com

21–30 of 194 posts

Re: I built a programming language using Claude Code

#21

I think we're going to see a lot more of this. I've done a similar thing, hosting a toy language on haskell, and it was remarkably easy to get something useful and usable, in basically a weekend. If you keep the surface area small enough you can now make a fully fledged, compiled language for basically every single purpose you'd like, and coevolve the language, the code, and the compiler

We did this in 4th year comp-sci.

Re: I built a programming language using Claude Code

#22

I think we're going to see a lot more of this. I've done a similar thing, hosting a toy language on haskell, and it was remarkably easy to get something useful and usable, in basically a weekend. If you keep the surface area small enough you can now make a fully fledged, compiled language for basically every single purpose you'd like, and coevolve the language, the code, and the compiler

[deleted]

Re: I built a programming language using Claude Code

#23

> While working on Cutlet, though, I allowed Claude to generate every single line of code. I didn’t even read any of the code. Instead, I built guardrails to make sure it worked correctly (more on that later). Impressive. As a practical matter, one wonders what th point would be in creating a new programming languages if the programmer no longer has to write or read code. Programming languages are after all the inter…

I've been wondering if a diffusion model could just generate software as binary that could be fed directly into memory.

Yeah, what could go wrong.

Re: I built a programming language using Claude Code

#24
> While working on Cutlet, though, I allowed Claude to generate every single line of code. I didn’t even read any of the code. Instead, I built guardrails to make sure it worked correctly (more on that later).

The "more on that later" was unit tests (also generated by Claude Code) and sample inputs and outputs (which is basically just unit tests by a different name).

This is... horrifically bad. It's stupidly easy to make unit tests pass with broken code, and even more stupidly easy when the test is also broken.

These "guardrails" are made of silly putty.

EDIT: Would downvoters care to share an explanation? Preferably one they thought of?

Re: I built a programming language using Claude Code

#26

> While working on Cutlet, though, I allowed Claude to generate every single line of code. I didn’t even read any of the code. Instead, I built guardrails to make sure it worked correctly (more on that later). Impressive. As a practical matter, one wonders what th point would be in creating a new programming languages if the programmer no longer has to write or read code. Programming languages are after all the inter…

The constraints enforced in the language still matter. A language which offers certain correctness guarantees may still be the most efficient way to build a particular piece of software even when it's a machine writing the code.

There may actually be more value in creating specialized languages now, not less. Most new languages historically go nowhere because convincing human programmers to spend the time it would take to learn them is difficult, but every AI coding bot will learn your new language as a matter of course after its next update includes the contents of your website.

Re: I built a programming language using Claude Code

#27
post #3

AI written code with a human writted blog post, that's a big step up. That said, it's a lot of words to say not a lot of things. Still a cool post, though!

> with a human writted blog post

I believe we're at a point where it's not possible to accurately decide whether text is completely written by human, by computer, or something in between.

Re: I built a programming language using Claude Code

#28

I think we're going to see a lot more of this. I've done a similar thing, hosting a toy language on haskell, and it was remarkably easy to get something useful and usable, in basically a weekend. If you keep the surface area small enough you can now make a fully fledged, compiled language for basically every single purpose you'd like, and coevolve the language, the code, and the compiler

Yeah it's a rewarding project. Getting a language that kinda works is surprisingly accessible. Though we must be mindful that this is still the "draw some circles" pane. Producing the rest of the rest of the famous owl is, as always, the hard bit.

Re: I built a programming language using Claude Code

#30

> While working on Cutlet, though, I allowed Claude to generate every single line of code. I didn’t even read any of the code. Instead, I built guardrails to make sure it worked correctly (more on that later). Impressive. As a practical matter, one wonders what th point would be in creating a new programming languages if the programmer no longer has to write or read code. Programming languages are after all the inter…

Like everything generated by LLMs though, it is built on the shoulders of giants - what will happen to software if no one is creating new programming languages anymore? Does that matter?
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