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We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler

anthropic.com

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Re: We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler

#441

Post by lelanthran »

qarl wrote: post #369
PostOnce wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing that it "works", but viability is another issue. It cost $20,000 and it worked, but it's also totally possible to spend $20,000 and have Claude shit out a pile of nonsense. You won't know until you've finished spending the money whether it will fail or not. Anthropic doesn't sell a contract that says "We'll only bill you if it works" like you can get from a bunch of humans. Do catastrophic bugs exist in…

> It cost $20,000 I'm curious - do you have ANY idea what it costs to have humans write 100,000 lines of code??? You should look it up. :)

> > It cost $20,000

> I'm curious - do you have ANY idea what it costs to have humans write 100,000 lines of code???

I'll bite - I can write you an unoptimised C compiler that emits assembly for $20k, and it won't be 100k lines of code (maybe 15k, the last time I did this?).

It won't take me a week, though.

I think this project is a good frame of reference and matches my experience - vibing with AI is sometimes more expensive than doing it myself, and always results in much more code than necessary.

Re: We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler

#442

Post by echelon »

the8472 wrote: post #295
regularfry wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is firmly where I am. "The wonder is not how well the dog dances, it is that it dances at all."

"It's like if a squirrel started playing chess and instead of "holy shit this squirrel can play chess!" most people responded with "But his elo rating sucks""

"The squirrel can do my job and more? It can do five years of my work in a month? For only $20k? Pssh, but I bet it copied someone's homework."

Developer salaries are about to tank.

This is the end of the line. People are just in denial.

Soon companies will hire the squirrel instead of you. And the squirrel will transform into enormous infrastructure we can't afford ourselves.

"One mega squirrel to implement your own operating system overnight. Just $100k."

It's going to be out of the reach of humans / ICs soon. Purely industrial. And all innovation will accrue to the capital holders.

Open weights models are our only hope of keeping a foot in the door.

Re: We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler

#443

Post by ozim »

Manouchehri wrote: post #374
typ wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd bet, on average, the quality of proprietary code is worse than open-source code. There have been decades of accumulated slop generated by human agents with wildly varied skill levels, all vibe-coded by ruthless, incompetent corporate bosses.

There's only very niche fields where closed-source code quality is often better than open-source code. Exploits and HFT are the two examples I can think of. Both are usually closed source because of the financial incentives.

Here we can start debating what means better code.

I haven’t seen HFT code but I have seen examples of exploit codes and most of it is amateur hour when it comes to building big size systems.

They are of course efficient in getting to the goal. But exploits are one off code that is not there to be maintained.

Re: We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler

#444

Post by anupamchugh »

This is a very early research prototype with no other inter-agent communication methods or high-level goal management processes."

The lock file approach (current_tasks/parse_if_statement.txt) prevents two agents from claiming the same task, but it can't prevent convergent wasted work. When all 16 agents hit the same Linux kernel bug, the lock files didn't help — the problem wasn't task collision, it was that the agents couldn't see they were all solving the same downstream failure. The GCC oracle workaround was clever, but it was a human inventing a new harness mid-flight because the coordination primitive wasn't enough.

Similarly, "Claude frequently broke existing functionality implementing new features" isn't a model capability problem — it's an input stability problem. Agent N builds against an interface that agent M just changed. Without gating on whether your inputs have changed since you started, you get phantom regressions

Re: We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler

#445

Post by p-e-w »

lelanthran wrote: post #441
qarl wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It cost $20,000 I'm curious - do you have ANY idea what it costs to have humans write 100,000 lines of code??? You should look it up. :)

> > It cost $20,000 > I'm curious - do you have ANY idea what it costs to have humans write 100,000 lines of code??? I'll bite - I can write you an unoptimised C compiler that emits assembly for $20k, and it won't be 100k lines of code (maybe 15k, the last time I did this?). It won't take me a week, though. I think this project is a good frame of reference and matches my experience - vibing with AI is sometimes more…

> I can write you an unoptimised C compiler that emits assembly for $20k

You may be willing to sell your work at that price, but that’s not the market rate, to put it very mildly. Even 10 times that would be seriously lowballing in the realm of contract work, regardless of whether it’s “optimised” or not (most software isn’t).

Re: We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler

#446

Post by flakiness »

lelanthran wrote: post #441
qarl wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It cost $20,000 I'm curious - do you have ANY idea what it costs to have humans write 100,000 lines of code??? You should look it up. :)

> > It cost $20,000 > I'm curious - do you have ANY idea what it costs to have humans write 100,000 lines of code??? I'll bite - I can write you an unoptimised C compiler that emits assembly for $20k, and it won't be 100k lines of code (maybe 15k, the last time I did this?). It won't take me a week, though. I think this project is a good frame of reference and matches my experience - vibing with AI is sometimes more…

Does it support x64, x8664, arm64 and riscv? (sorry, just trolling - we don't know the quality of backend other than x8664 which is supposed to be able to build bootable linux.)

Re: We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler

#447

Post by deaux »

bdangubic wrote: post #348
PostOnce wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing that it "works", but viability is another issue. It cost $20,000 and it worked, but it's also totally possible to spend $20,000 and have Claude shit out a pile of nonsense. You won't know until you've finished spending the money whether it will fail or not. Anthropic doesn't sell a contract that says "We'll only bill you if it works" like you can get from a bunch of humans. Do catastrophic bugs exist in…

> On top of that, Anthropic is losing money on it This has got to be my favorite one of them all that keeps coming up in too many comments… You know who also was losing money in the beginning?! every successful company that ever existed! some like Uber were losing billions for a decade. and when was the last time you rode in a taxi? (I still do, my kid never will). not sure how old you are and if you remember “facebo…

Completely detached from reality, brainwashed SV VC's who have made dumping the norm in their bubble.

I can guarantee you that 90% of successful businesses in the world made a profit their first year.

Re: We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler

#448

Post by TZubiri »

ndesaulniers wrote: post #165

I spent a good part of my career (nearly a decade) at Google working on getting Clang to build the linux kernel. https://clangbuiltlinux.github.io/ This LLM did it in (checks notes): > Over nearly 2,000 Claude Code sessions and $20,000 in API costs It may build, but does it boot (was also a significant and distinct next milestone)? (Also, will it blend?). Looks like yes! > The 100,000-line compiler can build a bootab…

>Is the generated code correct? The jury is still out on that one for production compilers. And then you have performance of generated code.

It's worth noting that this was developed by compiling Linux and running tests, so at least that is part of the training set and not the testing set.

But at least for linux, I'm guessing the tests are very robust and I'm guessing that will work correctly. That said, if any bugs pop up, it will show weak points in the linux tests.

Re: We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler

#449

Post by esafak »

nozzlegear wrote: post #131
modeless wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There seem to still be a lot of people who look at results like this and evaluate them purely based on the current state. I don't know how you can look at this and not realize that it represents a huge improvement over just a few months ago, there have been continuous improvements for many years now, and there is no reason to believe progress is stopping here. If you project out just one year, even assuming progress…

Every S-curve looks like an exponential until you hit the bend.

What if it plateaus smarter than us? You wouldn't be able to discern where it stopped. I'm not convinced it won't be able to create its own training data to keep improving. I see no ceiling on the horizon, other than energy.

Re: We tasked Opus 4.6 using agent teams to build a C Compiler

#450

Post by travisgriggs »

A C Compiler seems like one of the more straightforward things to have done. Reading this gives me the same vibe as when a magician does a frequently done trick (saw someone in half, etc).

I'd be more interested in letting it have a go at some some of the other "less trodden" paths of computing. Some of the things that would "wow me more":

- Build a BEAM alternative, perhaps in an embedded space

- Build a Smalltalk VM, perhaps in an embedded space, or in WASM

These things are documented at some level, but still require a bit of original thinking to execute and pull off. That would wow me more.

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