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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

#521

Post by LinXitoW »

potsandpans wrote: post #478
LinXitoW wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more like "We were promised, over and over again, that the squirrel would be autonomous grand master level. We spent insane amounts of money, labour, and opportunity costs of human progress on this. Now, here's a very expensive squirrel, that still needs guidance from a human grandmaster, and most of it's moves are just replications of existing games. Oh, it also can't move the pieces by itself, so it depends on…

My opinion: you are critiquing electricity because the candles are still better / more affordable / more honestly made. You seem to be mad that companies are in the business of selling us things. It's the way this whole thing works. If you don't think this is impressive: stop everything you're doing and go make a c compiler that can build the Linux kernel.

For reference, I use LLMs daily for coding. I do think they are useful.

I am speaking about corporations and sales tactics, because this VERY experiment was done by exactly such a corporation. How about you think about how "this whole thing works", and apply it to their post? What did they not write? How many worse experiments did they not post about to not jeopardize investments?

I don't find this impressive, because it doesn't do anything I'd want, anything I'd need, anything the world needs, and it doesn't do anything new compared to my personal experience. Which, just to reiterate, is that LLMs are useful, just not nowhere close to as world shattering/ending as the CEOs are selling it. Acknowledging that has nothing to do with being a luddite.

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

#522

Post by wiseowise »

jeffbee wrote: post #38
trilogic wrote: post #13

Can it create employment? How is this making life better. I understand the achievement but come on, wouldn´t it be something to show if you created employment for 10000 people using your 20000 USD! Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, XAI, all solving the wrong problems, your problems not the collective ones.

"Employment" is not intrinsically valuable. It is an emergent property of one way of thinking about economic systems.

That’s the most HN reply ever. Obtuse and pedantic.

Tell a struggling undergrad or unemployed that “employment” is not intrinsically valuable, maybe they’ll be able to use the rhetoric to move a couple positions higher in a soup kitchen queue before their food coupons expire.

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

#523

Post by Anon1096 »

chasd00 wrote: post #256
ndesaulniers wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people care more about compile times than the performance of generated code. Perhaps even the correctness of generated code. Perhaps more so than determinism of the generated code. Different people in different contexts can have different priorities. Trying to make everyone happy can sometimes lead to making no one happy. Thus dichotomies like `-O2` vs `-Os`. EDIT (since HN is preventing me from responding): > S…

a compiler introducing bugs into code it compiles is a nightmare thankfully few have faced. The only thing worse would be a CPU bug like the legendary Pentium bug. Imagine you compile something like Postgres only to have it crash in some unpredictable way. How long do you stare at Postgres source before suspecting the compiler? What if this compiler was used to compile code in software running all over cloud stacks?…

It's not that uncommon if you work in massive lowish level systems. Clang/LLVM being relatively bug free is the result of many corporate big tech low level compiler swes working with the application swes to debug why XYZ isn't working properly and then writing the appropriate fix. But compiler bugs still come up every so often, I've seen it on multiple occasions.

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

#524

Post by PostOnce »

bdangubic wrote: post #379
PostOnce wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we forgetting that sometimes, they just go bankrupt?

name one with comparable number of users and revenue? not saying you are wrong but I would bet against the outcome

I'll be able to do just that in 36mo or so after the IPOs and subsequent collapse, I think.

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

#526

Post by somebodythere »

LinXitoW wrote: post #411
the8472 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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""

It's more like "We were promised, over and over again, that the squirrel would be autonomous grand master level. We spent insane amounts of money, labour, and opportunity costs of human progress on this. Now, here's a very expensive squirrel, that still needs guidance from a human grandmaster, and most of it's moves are just replications of existing games. Oh, it also can't move the pieces by itself, so it depends on…

even a squirrel that needs guidance from a human grandmaster, is heavily inspired by existing games, and who can use Piece Mover library is incredible. 5 years ago the squirrel was just a squirrel. then it was able to make legal moves. now it can play a whole game from start to finish, with help. that is incredible

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

#527

Post by grey-area »

bdangubic wrote: post #432
svieira wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enron

I should have guessed someone would answer this question in this thread with Enron :) I did not ask for random company that went under for any reason but specific question related to users and revenue.

Well there are lots and lots of examples that don't end in bankruptcy, just a very large loss of capital for investors. The majority of the stars of the dotcom bubble just as one example: Qualcomm, pets.com, Yahoo!, MicroStrategy etc etc.

Uber, which you cite as a success, is only just starting to make any money, and any original investors are very unlikely to see a return given the huge amounts ploughed in.

MicroStrategy has transformed itself, same company, same founder, similar scam 20 years later, only this time they're peddling bitcoin as the bright new future. I'm surprised they didn't move on to GAI.

Qualcomm is now selling itself as an AI first company, is it, or is it trying to ride the next bubble?

Even if GAI becomes a roaring success, the prominent companies now are unlikely to be those with lasting success.

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

#528

Post by legulere »

potsandpans wrote: post #478
LinXitoW wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more like "We were promised, over and over again, that the squirrel would be autonomous grand master level. We spent insane amounts of money, labour, and opportunity costs of human progress on this. Now, here's a very expensive squirrel, that still needs guidance from a human grandmaster, and most of it's moves are just replications of existing games. Oh, it also can't move the pieces by itself, so it depends on…

My opinion: you are critiquing electricity because the candles are still better / more affordable / more honestly made. You seem to be mad that companies are in the business of selling us things. It's the way this whole thing works. If you don't think this is impressive: stop everything you're doing and go make a c compiler that can build the Linux kernel.

It is very impressive indeed, but impressiveness is not the same as usefulness. If important further features can’t get implemented anymore The usefulness is pretty limited. And usefulness further needs to be weighed against cost.

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

#529

Post by pja »

chasd00 wrote: post #227
gignico wrote: post #3

> To stress test it, I tasked 16 agents with writing a Rust-based C compiler, from scratch, capable of compiling the Linux kernel. Over nearly 2,000 Claude Code sessions and $20,000 in API costs, the agent team produced a 100,000-line compiler that can build Linux 6.9 on x86, ARM, and RISC-V. If you don't care about code quality, maintainability, readability, conformance to the specification, and performance of the c…

> If you don't care about code quality, maintainability, readability, conformance to the specification, and performance of the compiler and of the compiled code, please, give me your $20,000, I'll give you your C compiler written from scratch :) i don't know if you could. Let's say you get a check for $20k, how long will it take you to make an equivalent performing and compliant compiler? Are you going to put your li…

There are plenty of people on HN who could re-implement a C compiler like this in less than three months. Algorithmically compilers like this are a solved problem that has been very well documented over the last sixty or seventy years. Implementing a small compiler is a typical MSc project that you might carry out in a couple of months alongside a taught masters.

This compiler is both slower than gcc even when optimising (you can’t actually turn optimisation off) & doesn’t reject type incorrect code so will happily accept illegal C code. It’s also apparently very brittle - what happens if you feed it the Linux kernel sources v. 6.10 instead of 6.9? - presumably it fails.

All of the above make it simultaneously 1) really, really impressive and 2) completely useless in the real world. Great for creating discussion though!

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