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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

#691

Post by ryanjshaw »

friendzis wrote: post #658
ryanjshaw wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You won't know until you've finished spending the money whether it will fail or not. How do you conclude that? You start off with a bunch of tests and build these things incrementally, why would you spend 20k before realizing there’s a problem?

Because literally no real-world non-research project starts with "we have an extremely comprehensive test suite and specification complete down to the most finite detail" and then searches for a way to turn it into code.

I’ve spent nearly 20 years working as a consultant writing software, I know that. How do you think humans solve that problem?

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

#692

Post by DSMan195276 »

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]

Without questioning the LOC metric itself, I'll propose a different problem: LOC for human and AI projects are not necessarily comparable for judging their complexity.

For a human, writing 100k LOC to do something that might only really need 15k would be a bit surprising and unexpected - a human would probably reconsider what they were doing well before they typed 100k LOC. Where-as, an AI doesn't necessarily have that concern - it can just keep generating code and doesn't care how long it will take so it doesn't have the same practical pressure to produce concise code.

The result is that while for large enough human-written programs there's probably an average "density" they reach in relation of LOC vs. complexity of the original problem, AI-generated programs probably average out at an entirely different "density" number.

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

#693

Post by stevejb »

qarl wrote: post #663
rhubarbtree wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t say it was trivial. Just that I thought my course mates would be able to do it.

You thought your course mates would be able to write a C compiler that builds the Linux? Huh. Interesting. Like the other guy pointed out, compiler classes often get students to write toy C compilers. I think a lot of students don't understand the meaning of the word "toy". I think this thread is FULL of people like that.

Hey! I built a Lego technic car once 20 years ago. I am fully confident that I can build an actual road worthy electric vehicle. It's just a couple of edge cases and a bit bigger right? /s

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

#694

Post by [deleted] »

brundolf wrote: post #615
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…

One thing people have pointed out is that well-specified (even if huge and tedious) projects are an ideal fit for AI, because the loop can be fully closed and it can test and verify the artifact by itself with certainty. Someone was saying they had it generate a rudimentary JS engine because the available test suite is so comprehensive Not to invalidate this! But it's toward the "well-suited for AI" end of the spectr…

[deleted]

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

#695

Post by nicebyte »

jakewins wrote: post #675
TheCondor wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The assembler seems like nearly the easiest part. Slurp arch manuals and knock it out, it’s fixed and complete.

I am surprised by the number of comments that say the assembler is trivial - it is admittedly perhaps simpler than some other parts of the compiler chain, but it’s not trivial. What you are doing is kinda serialising a self-referential graph structure of machine code entries that reference each others addresses, but you don’t know the addresses because the (x86) instructions are variable-length, so you can’t know the…

assembler is far from trivial at least for x86 where there are many possible encodings for a given instruction. emitting the most optimal encoding that does the correct thing depends on surrounding context, and you'd have to do multiple passes over the input.

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

#696

Post by RA_Fisher »

PostOnce wrote: post #336
qarl wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Still a really cool project! Yeah. This test sorta definitely proves that AI is legit. Despite the millions of people still insisting it's a hoax. The fact that the optimizations aren't as good as the 40 year gcc project? Eh - I think people who focus on that are probably still in some serious denial.

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…

Progress can be reviewed over time, and I'd think that'd take a lot of the risk out.

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

#697

Post by potsandpans »

LinXitoW wrote: post #521
potsandpans wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, becaus…

To be a bit pedantic, I'm not accusing you of being a Luddite. That would mean that you were fundamentally opposed to a new technology that's obviously more useful.

Instead, in my opinion you are not giving enough grace to what is being demonstrated today.

This is my analogy: you're seeing electrical demonstrations in front of your very eyes, but because the charlatans who are funding the research haven't quite figured out how to harness it, you're dismissing the wonder. "That's all well and good, but my beeswax candles and gas lamps light my apartment just fine."

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

#698

Post by georgeven »

PostOnce wrote: post #336
qarl wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Still a really cool project! Yeah. This test sorta definitely proves that AI is legit. Despite the millions of people still insisting it's a hoax. The fact that the optimizations aren't as good as the 40 year gcc project? Eh - I think people who focus on that are probably still in some serious denial.

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's 20,000 in 2026, with the price of tokens halving every year (at a given perf level), this will be around 1,000 dollars in 2030

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

#699

Post by _lunix »

The comments at [1] are a bit _too_ trollish for me, but they _do_ showcase that this compiler is far too lenient on what it accepts to the point where I'd hesitate to call it ... a C compiler (This [2] comment in particular is pretty damning).

Still, an impressive achievement nonetheless, but there's a lot of nuance under the surface.

[1] https://github.com/anthropics/claudes-c-compiler/issues/1

[2] https://github.com/anthropics/claudes-c-compiler/issues/1#is...

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

#700

Post by astrange »

butterNaN wrote: post #614
astrange wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The C spec is certainly not formal or precise. https://www.ralfj.de/blog/2020/12/14/provenance.html Another example is that it's unclear from the standard if you can write malloc() in C.

Sure but the point OP is making is that it is still more spec'd than most real world problems

You're welcome to try writing a C compiler and standard library doing no research other than reading the spec.
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