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Claude’s C Compiler vs. GCC

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Re: Claude’s C Compiler vs. GCC

#251

Post by Aeglaecia »

kleiba wrote: post #173
vasco wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is not polite, he is of the utmost rudeness. As a reply to being pointed to the fact that he copied so much code that the generated code included someone else's name in the License, his reply was https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/pull/14369/changes/ce372a60bd... I struggle to think how someone thinks this is polite. Is politeness to you just not using curse words?

Admittedly, his handling of this aspect was perhaps less than ideal, but I cannot see any impoliteness here whatsoever. As a matter of fact, I struggle to think how you could think otherwise. But I am biased. After having lived a number of years in a country where I would say the average understanding of politeness is vastly different from where I've grown up, I've learned that there is just a difference of opinion o…

interpreting his words on a literal basis , the PR submitter isn't being directly impolite ...

if you will , place yourself in the shoes of the repository maintainer. a random person (with a personal agenda) has popped up trying to sell you a solution (that he doesn't understand) to a problem (that you don't see as problematic). after you spending literal hours patiently explaining why the proposition is not acceptable , this random person still continues attempting to sell his solution.

do you see any impoliteness in the reframed scenario ?

Re: Claude’s C Compiler vs. GCC

#252

Post by direwolf20 »

simianwords wrote: post #143
gignico wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. This flawed argument by which everything will be fixed by future models drives me crazy every time.

That’s been the trend for a while. Can you make a prediction that says something concretely like “AI will not be able to do X by 2028” for a specific and well defined X?

Were any made about 2025?

Re: Claude’s C Compiler vs. GCC

#253

Post by gjulianm »

red75prime wrote: post #62
marcus_holmes wrote: post #8

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…

> 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-LLM: Read the freaking article, it's not that long. The compiler made a mistake in an area where only two compilers exist that are up to the task: Linux Kernel.

> Read the freaking article

The freaking article omits several issues in the "compiler". My bet is because they didn't actually challenged the output of the LLM, as it usually happens.

If you go to the repository, you'll find fun things, like the fact that it cannot compile a bunch of popular projects, and that it compiles others but the code doesn't pass the tests. It's a bit surprising, specially when they don't explain why those failures exist (are they missing support for some extensions? any feature they lack?)

It gets less surprising, though, when you start to see that the compiler doesn't actually do any type checking, for example. It allows dereferences to non-pointers. It allows calling functions with the wrong number of arguments.

There's also this fantastic part of the article where they explain that the LLM got the code to a point where any change or bug fix breaks a lot of the existing tests, and that further progress is not possible.

Then the fact that this article points out that the kernel doesn't actually link. How did they "boot it"? It might very well be possible that it crashed soon after boot and wasn't actually usable.

So, as usual, the problem here is that a lot of people look at LLM outputs and trust what they're saying they achieved.

Re: Claude’s C Compiler vs. GCC

#254

Post by copilot_king_2 »

Culonavirus wrote: post #85
Alupis wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reminded, once again, of the recent "vibe coded" OCaml fiasco[1]. The PR author had zero understanding why their entirely LLM-generated contribution was viewed so suspiciously. The article validates a significant point: it is one thing to have passing tests and be able to produce output that resembles correctness - however it's something entirely different for that output to be good and maintainable . [1] https:/…

Damn... "AI has a very deep understanding of how this code works. Please challenge me on this." this person is something else. Just... wow.

This is the norm in my experience.

If you haven't come across a significant number of AI addicts as obnoxiously delusional as @Culonavirus describes, you must be getting close to retirement age.

People with any connection to new college graduates understand that this sort of idiotic LLM-backed arrogance is extremely common among low-to-mid-functioning twenty-somethings.

Re: Claude’s C Compiler vs. GCC

#255

Post by co_king_3 »

raincole wrote: post #21
marcus_holmes wrote: post #8

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…

Are you trying to demonstrate a textbook example of straw man argument?

Um actually, it's called a Steel Man argument.

I learned about it from HackerNews and ChatGPT.

Re: Claude’s C Compiler vs. GCC

#256

Post by codethief »

samultio wrote: post #131
raincole wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the insane rate of progress Yeah but the speed of progress can never catch the speed of a moving goalpost!

Training data only teaches it how to reach the goalpost, not how to overtake it.

Are we sure about that? I mean, we have seen that LLMs are able to generalize to some degree. So I don't see a reason why you couldn't put an agent in a loop with a profiler and have it try to optimize the code. Will it come up with entirely novel ideas? Unlikely. Could it potentially combine existing ideas in interesting, novel ways that would lead to CCC outperforming GCC? I think so. Will it get stuck along the way? Almost certainly.

Re: Claude’s C Compiler vs. GCC

#257

Post by co_king_3 »

Culonavirus wrote: post #85
Alupis wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reminded, once again, of the recent "vibe coded" OCaml fiasco[1]. The PR author had zero understanding why their entirely LLM-generated contribution was viewed so suspiciously. The article validates a significant point: it is one thing to have passing tests and be able to produce output that resembles correctness - however it's something entirely different for that output to be good and maintainable . [1] https:/…

Damn... "AI has a very deep understanding of how this code works. Please challenge me on this." this person is something else. Just... wow.

[flagged]

Re: Claude’s C Compiler vs. GCC

#258

Post by aurareturn »

techpression wrote: post #213
aurareturn wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a pro, my argument is "it's good enough now to make me incredibly productive, and it's only going to keep getting better because of advancements in compute". I'd rather get really good at leveraging AI now than to bury my head in the sand hoping this will go away. I happen to agree with the saying that AI isn't going to replace people, but people using AI will replace people who don't. So by the time you come back…

Why would anything you learn today be relevant tomorrow if AI keeps advancing? You would need less and less of all your tooling, markdown files and other rituals and just let the AI figure it out altogether.

So I can keep my job now so I can pay for compute in the future when I'm out of a job. The compute will be used to create my own business to make money.

Re: Claude’s C Compiler vs. GCC

#259

Post by direwolf20 »

nopurpose wrote: post #169
kuerbel wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And no-one ever stops and thinks about what it means to give up so much control. Maybe one of those companies will come out on top. The others produce garbage in comparison. Capital loves a single throat to choke and doesn't gently pluralise. So of course you buy the best service. And it really can generate any code, get it working, bug free. People unlearn coding on this level. And some day, poof, Microsoft is comin…

You could make same argument in "information superhighway" days, but it turned out to be the opposite: no company monopolised internet services, despite trying hard. With so many companies in AI race it is already pretty competitive landscape and it doesnt seem likely to me that any of them can build deep enough moat to come ahead.

Internet services have been centralised into a few ISPs and a few websites everyone visits

Re: Claude’s C Compiler vs. GCC

#260

Post by kuboble »

phorkyas82 wrote: post #102
nvrmnd wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not fair to compare them like this! 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.

Don't forget that gcc is in the training set. That's what always puts me off: when AI replaces artists, SO and FOSS projects, it can only feed into itself and deteriorate..

The AlphaZero approach shows otherwise, as long as there is an automated way to generate new test cases and evaluate the outcomes.

We can't do it for all domains, but I believe we can for efficient code.

today's models could be probably already good enough to compose tasks, and evaluate the results.

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