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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

#591

Post by beowulfey »

qarl wrote: post #416
sarchertech wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, companies don’t pay people to write 100k LOC. They pay people to write useful software. We figured out that LOC was a useless productivity metric in the 80s.

[flagged]

Your first post specifically stated:

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

which any reasonable reading would take to mean "paid-by-line", which we all know doesn't happen. Otherwise, I could type out 30,000 lines of gibberish and take my fat paycheck.

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

#592

Post by aurareturn »

byzantinegene wrote: post #514
tumdum_ wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On top of that, Anthropic is losing money on it. It seems they are *not* losing money on inference: https://bsky.app/profile/steveklabnik.com/post/3mdirf7tj5s2e

no, and that is widely known. the actual problem is that the margins are not sufficient at that scale to make up for the gargantuan training costs to train their SOTA model.

Source on that?

Because inference revenue is outpacing training cost based on OpenAI’s report and intuition.

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

#593

Post by aurareturn »

cowl wrote: post #459
qarl wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how your comment is getting downvoted. Like it's a surprise that startups burn through money. I get the feeling that people really have no idea what they're talking about in here anymore. It's a shame.

then you are misunderstaing the downvoting. it's not that the fact that they are burning money. it's the fact that this cost today 20k but that is not the real cost if you factor the it is losing money on this price. So Tomorrow when this "startup" will need to come out of their money burning phase, like every startup has to sooner or later, that cost will increase, because there is no other monetising avenue, at lea…

Source that they’re losing money on each token?

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

#594

Post by lelanthran »

qarl wrote: post #589
lelanthran wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, you'll have to match the performance of the actual code, regardless of what is in the article. It is a C compiler written in Rust. Look, it's clear that you don't hire s/ware developers very much - your specs are vague and open to interpretation, and it's also clear that I do get hired often, because I pointed out that your spec isn't clear. As far as "playing games" goes, I'm not allowing you to change your si…

[flagged]

> Too late friend, you've revealed your stripes.

So you are not willing to put $20k in escrow for, as per your offer:

>>>> Deal. I'll pay you IF you can achieve the same level of performance. Heck, I'll double it.

I just noticed now that you actually offered double. I will do it. This is my real name, my contact details are not hard to find.

I will do it, with emitted binaries performing as well as or better than the binaries emitted by CC.

Put your $40k into a recognised South African escrow service (I've used a few in the past, but I'd rather you choose one so you don't accuse me of being some sort of African scammer).

Because I am engaged in a 6+ hours/day gig right now, I cannot do it f/time until my current gig is completed (and they are paying me directly, not via escrow, so I am not going to jeopardise that).

I can however do a few hours each day, and collect my payment of $40k only once the kernel image boots in about the same time that the CC kernel image boots.

> Yes, we all took the compilers class in college. Those of us who went to college, that is.

If you knew that, why on earth would you assume that implementing a C compiler is at all a complex task?

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

#595

Post by wyldfire »

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…

Any way you slice it: LLMs provide real utility today, right now. Even yesterday, before Opus/Codex were updated. So the money was not all for naught. It seems very plausible given the progress made so far that this new industry will continue to deliver significant productivity gains.

If you want to worry about something, let's worry about what happens to humanity when the world we've become accustomed to is yanked out from underneath us in a span of 10-20 years.

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

#596

Post by hmry »

astrange wrote: post #541
hmry wrote: post #224

If I, a human, read the source code of $THING and then later implement my own version, that's not a "clean-room" re-implementation. The whole point of "clean-room" is that no single person has access to both the original code and the new code. (That way, you can legally prove that no copyright infringement took place.) But when an AI does it, now it counts? Opus is trained on the source code of Clang, GCC, TCC, etc.…

Copyright doesn't protect ideas, it protects writing. Avoiding reading LLVM or GCC is to protect you from other kinds of IP issues, but it's not a copyright issue. The same people contribute to both projects despite their different licenses.

They don't call Clang a "clean-room implementation". Unlike Anthropic, who are calling their project exactly that

A clean-room implementation is when you implement a replacement by only looking at the behavior and documentation (possibly written by another person on your team who is not allowed to write code, only documentation).

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

#597

Post by unglaublich »

iberator wrote: post #470
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…

Claude did not wrote it. you wrote it with PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE with 20.000 long commandshyellihg him exactly what to do. Real usable AI would create it with simple: 'make c compilers c99 faster than GCC'. AI usage should be banned in general. It takes jobs faster than creating new ones ..

Jobs are a means, not a goal.

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

#598

Post by jelder »

jaccola wrote: post #584
direwolf20 wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we've built a system where if you don't have a job, you die.

This is already hyperbolic; in most countries where software engineers or similar knowledge workers are widely employed there are welfare programmes. To add to that, if there is such mass unemployment in this scenario it will be because fewer people are needed to produce and therefore everything will become cheaper... This is the best kind of unemployment. So at best: none of us have to work again and will get everyt…

If you were to rank all of the C compilers in the world and then rank all of the welfare systems in the world, this vibe-coded mess would be at approximately the same rank as the American welfare system. Especially if you extrapolate this narcissistic, hateful kleptocracy out a few more years.

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

#599

Post by HWR_14 »

deaux wrote: post #447
bdangubic wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

1 year seems aggressive. Successful restaurants have around the first year as the average break even timeline, with the vast majority between 6 and 18 months.

They are making a profit on each sale, but there are fixed costs to running a business.

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