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I hate compilers

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51–60 of 182 posts

Re: I hate compilers

#51
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the off chance that you’re serious, that would result in disastrously bad output. The difference between “jmp $+15” and “jmp $+16” is inscrutable and the LLM would not be able to pick the right one without tooling. That tooling is a compiler. The higher level, the better chance the LLM can be steered to good output. Machine code is hopeless, don’t bother.

> The difference between “jmp $+15” and “jmp $+16” is inscrutable I don't see why that's the case. LLM trained on binary would totally see it, not? Also the tool can also be running the test and a debugger.

Even if it could, it would be ridiculously token inefficient to update huge amount of addresses instead when some small change is done to the middle of a binary

Re: I hate compilers

#53
post #23

If Clang generated non-deterministic output due to pointer addresses then that's a bug (happens regularly) that should be fixed. The most common way this happens if it some code path is iterating over a DenseMap which is non-deterministic. Sometimes that's fine and sometimes that's not depending on how that map is used. The common way to fix that is to switch to a MapVector which pays some additional runtime/memory c…

I'll try and make a minimal reproduction case and file a bug. Do you know if any tooling that can take a binary and fuzz it down to a minimal reproduction set?

[deleted]

Re: I hate compilers

#54

These seem very reasonable, the workarounds used are natural, and overall the article is not at all congruous with the conclusion in the (clickbait?) title? Compilers literally made your project possible!

> Clang relies on address layout for ordering things

I would consider that a bug tbh

Re: I hate compilers

#55
post #49

> What do you do when the client has WebAssembly disabled? > I decided to take inspiration from the legendary talk The Birth and Death of JavaScript and just recompile the WebAssembly to JavaScript. So what do you do when the client has Javascript disabled ?

https://anubis.techaro.lol/docs/admin/configuration/challeng...

Re: I hate compilers

#57
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can "LLMs are bad at counting" be generalized to "LLM are better in complex stuff but make more mistakes in simple"?

I would phrase it as "LLMs are good at big picture stuff and bad at fine detail", or to put it another way, they're accurate, but imprecise and with low reproducibility.

But where does that leave us when programmers treat themselves as architects with the AI doing the drudge work? As seems to be the fashion.

It then means you have 2 parties focussing on the big picture and no one focussing on the details.

Re: I hate compilers

#58
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can "LLMs are bad at counting" be generalized to "LLM are better in complex stuff but make more mistakes in simple"?

I would phrase it as "LLMs are good at big picture stuff and bad at fine detail", or to put it another way, they're accurate, but imprecise and with low reproducibility.

It is my experience that it's the opposite. LLMs are very very precise but wildly inaccurate. They might give you 17 significant digits but be off by 10 orders of magnitude, to use a metaphor.
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