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Minikotlin

minikotlin.run

21–30 of 42 posts

Re: Minikotlin

#22

> One pass, all the way down to bytecode > hands off to two of its own IRs before writing WASM-GC by hand So it's not "one pass" lol. Do you know what a pass is? Not that it matters - this AI is claiming "one pass" as though that's a good thing, but it's usually not. One-pass compilers can't typecheck forward references.

[deleted]

Re: Minikotlin

#23

This is very cool! Slightly off-topic though, I miss technical people writing in their own voice about the awesome things they've built.

Chances are they aren't a technical person and didn't build it, so wouldn't have anything interesting to say anyways. Web compilers are dime-a-dozen and LLMs can easily produce them with no active guidance. Very much in the training data[1]. This looks like just another person posting something they spent all of two minutes prompting. [1] https://github.com/JetBrains/kotlin-playground

”Web compilers are dime-a-dozen”

Oh didn’t know that! What is the best for ”compiles to wasm in browser” featureset?

Re: Minikotlin

#24
post #8

Visibly claude produced website. No link to code. Is the expectation that people write kotlin in their browser? How do people work this into their development workflow? Is this just a neat demo?

Yeah, I hate the LLM wording too

This is one thing I can't stand about current LLMs. I can't put my finger on it but AI written English is so obvious

Re: Minikotlin

#27

> One pass, all the way down to bytecode > hands off to two of its own IRs before writing WASM-GC by hand So it's not "one pass" lol. Do you know what a pass is? Not that it matters - this AI is claiming "one pass" as though that's a good thing, but it's usually not. One-pass compilers can't typecheck forward references.

Also, it's only "by hand" if you, the developer, writes it. In this case:

"The frontend — lexer, parser, semantic analysis (it’s called mkf) — hands off to two of its own IRs before writing WASM-GC by hand."

So those frontend tools do the writing, not the developer?

That's not "by hand". One might say "writes WASM-GC directly". But no that also doesn't happen, it goes through an IR first?

Personally I wouldn't put too much trust in a developer that even can't get their terminology correct. Well either that or I foobar'd my understanding of the writeup?

Anyway, looks like an interesting project.

Re: Minikotlin

#28
The example program they give as a "specimen" doesn't compile unless you specify the generic type of the "lanes" variable explicitly. And the compiler doesn't tell you where the error is. But it does build and run once you change it to "listOf".

(The program builds as-is in the Kotlin Playground, at least for the JVM platform; the other platforms don't seem to have kotlinx.coroutines available.)

Re: Minikotlin

#29
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I hate the LLM wording too

This is one thing I can't stand about current LLMs. I can't put my finger on it but AI written English is so obvious

Its the uncanny valley. There's just something about it as a whole that makes it seem obviously not human.

Re: Minikotlin

#30
post #13

Seems to be missing the "why" over Kotlins native WASM support (which is very mature) The official Kotlin playground uses WASM, for example (JVM drop down-> choose "WASM") https://play.kotlinlang.org

I think that compiles WASM in the server, whereas this compiles in the browser. I'd challenge the 'by hand' assertion though.

WASM mode still works with no network, so it can't be relying on the server.
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