11–20 of 377 posts
/s
This is actually a nice case study in why agentic LLMs do kind of think. It's by no means the same code or compiler. It had to figure out lots and lots of problems along the way to get to the point of tests passing.
I think one of the issue is that the register allocation algorithm -- alongside the SSA generation -- is not enough. Generally after the SSA pass, you convert all of them into register transfer language (RTL) and then do register allocation pass. And for GCC's case it is even more extreme -- You have GIMPLE in the middle that does more aggressive optimization, similar to rustc's MIR. CCC doesn't have all that, and fo…
What is the typedef problem?
Since Claude Code can browse the web, is it fair to think of it as “rewriting and simplifying a compiler originally written in C++ into Rust”?
I think this is a great example of both points of view in the ongoing debate. Pro-LLM coding agents: look! a working compiler built in a few hours by an agent! this is amazing! Anti-LLM coding agents: it's not a working compiler, though. And it doesn't matter how few hours it took, because it doesn't work. It's useless. Pro: Sure, but we can get the agent to fix that. Anti: Can you, though? We've seen that the more c…
I think this is a great example of both points of view in the ongoing debate. Pro-LLM coding agents: look! a working compiler built in a few hours by an agent! this is amazing! Anti-LLM coding agents: it's not a working compiler, though. And it doesn't matter how few hours it took, because it doesn't work. It's useless. Pro: Sure, but we can get the agent to fix that. Anti: Can you, though? We've seen that the more c…
I'm surprised that this wasn't possible before with just a bigger context size.
The prospect of going the last mile to fix the remaining problems reminds me of the old joke: "The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time."
I think this is a great example of both points of view in the ongoing debate. Pro-LLM coding agents: look! a working compiler built in a few hours by an agent! this is amazing! Anti-LLM coding agents: it's not a working compiler, though. And it doesn't matter how few hours it took, because it doesn't work. It's useless. Pro: Sure, but we can get the agent to fix that. Anti: Can you, though? We've seen that the more c…
In my experience, it is often the other way around. Enthusiasts are tasked with trying to open minds that seem very closed on the subject. Most serious users of these tools recognize the shortcomings and also can make well-educated guesses on the short term future. It's the anti crowd who get hellbent on this ridiculously unfounded "robots are just parrots and can't ever replace real programmers" shtick.
But lying and hype is baked into the DNA of AI booster culture. At this point it can be safely assumed anything short of right-here-right-now proof is pure unfettered horseshit when coming from anyone and everyone promoting the value of AI.
I think this is a great example of both points of view in the ongoing debate. Pro-LLM coding agents: look! a working compiler built in a few hours by an agent! this is amazing! Anti-LLM coding agents: it's not a working compiler, though. And it doesn't matter how few hours it took, because it doesn't work. It's useless. Pro: Sure, but we can get the agent to fix that. Anti: Can you, though? We've seen that the more c…
As someone who leans pro in this debate, I don't think I would make that statement. I would say the results are exactly as we expect.
Also, a highly verifiable task like this is well suited to LLMs, and I expect within the next ~2 years AI tools will produce a better compiler than gcc.
I think this is a great example of both points of view in the ongoing debate. Pro-LLM coding agents: look! a working compiler built in a few hours by an agent! this is amazing! Anti-LLM coding agents: it's not a working compiler, though. And it doesn't matter how few hours it took, because it doesn't work. It's useless. Pro: Sure, but we can get the agent to fix that. Anti: Can you, though? We've seen that the more c…
Pretty much. It's missing a tiny detail though. One side is demanding we keep giving hundreds of billions to them and at the same time promising the other side's unemployment.
That's a valid take. The problem is that there are, at this time, so many valid takes that it's hard to determine which are more valid/accurate than the other.
FWIW, I think this is more insightful than most of the takes I've seen, which basically amount to "side-1: we're moving to a higher level of abstraction" and "side-2: it's not higher abstraction, just less deterministic codegen".