Can someone explain to me, what’s the big deal about this?
The AI model was trained on lots of code and spit out sonething similar than gcc. Why is this revolutionary?
Claude’s C Compiler vs. GCC
71–80 of 377 posts
Re: Claude’s C Compiler vs. GCC
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
This to me sounds a lot like the SpaceX conversation: - Ohh look it can [write small function / do a small rocket hop] but it can't [ write a compiler / get to orbit]! - Ohh look it can [write a toy compiler / get to orbit] but it can't [compile linux / be reusable] - Ohh look it can [compile linux / get reusable orbital rocket] but it can't [build a compiler that rivals GCC / turn the rockets around fast enough] - T…
> the insane rate of progress Yeah but the speed of progress can never catch the speed of a moving goalpost!
What about the hype? If you claim your LLM generated compiler is functionally on par with GCC I’d expect it to match your claim.
I still won’t use it while it also matches all the non-functional requirements but you’re free to go and recompile all the software you use with it.
Re: Claude’s C Compiler vs. GCC
#73I think this is a great example of both points of view in the ongoing debate. Pro-LLM coding agents: look! a working compiler built in a few hours by an agent! this is amazing! Anti-LLM coding agents: it's not a working compiler, though. And it doesn't matter how few hours it took, because it doesn't work. It's useless. Pro: Sure, but we can get the agent to fix that. Anti: Can you, though? We've seen that the more c…
This to me sounds a lot like the SpaceX conversation: - Ohh look it can [write small function / do a small rocket hop] but it can't [ write a compiler / get to orbit]! - Ohh look it can [write a toy compiler / get to orbit] but it can't [compile linux / be reusable] - Ohh look it can [compile linux / get reusable orbital rocket] but it can't [build a compiler that rivals GCC / turn the rockets around fast enough] - T…
> This to me sounds a lot like the SpaceX conversation
The problem is that it is absolutely indiscernible from the Theranos conversation as well…
If Anthropic stopped making lies about the current capability of their models (like “it compiles the Linux kernel” here, but it's far from the first time they do that), maybe neutral people would give them the benefit of the doubt.
For one grifter that happen to succeed at delivering his grandiose promises (Elon), how many grifters will fail?
Re: Claude’s C Compiler vs. GCC
#74Honest question: would a normal CS student, junior, senior, or expert software developer be able to build this kind of project, and in what amount of time? I am pretty sure everybody agrees that this result is somewhere between slop code that barely works and the pinnacle of AI-assisted compiler technology. But discussions should not be held from the extreme points. Instead, I am looking for a realistic estimation fr…
> Honest question: would a normal CS student, junior, senior, or expert software developer be able to build this kind of project, and in what amount of time?
I offered to do it, but without a deadline (I work f/time for money), only a cost estimation based on how many hours I think it should take me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46909310
The poster I responded to had claimed that it was not possible to produce a compiler capable of compiling a bootable Linux kernel within the $20k cost, nor for double that ($40k).
I offered to do it for $40k, but no takers. I initially offered to do it for $20k, but the poster kept evading, so I settled on asking for the amount he offered.
Re: Claude’s C Compiler vs. GCC
#75I think this is a great example of both points of view in the ongoing debate. Pro-LLM coding agents: look! a working compiler built in a few hours by an agent! this is amazing! Anti-LLM coding agents: it's not a working compiler, though. And it doesn't matter how few hours it took, because it doesn't work. It's useless. Pro: Sure, but we can get the agent to fix that. Anti: Can you, though? We've seen that the more c…
> Pro-LLM coding agents: look! a working compiler built in a few hours by an agent! this is amazing! > Anti-LLM coding agents: it's not a working compiler, though. And it doesn't matter how few hours it took, because it doesn't work. It's useless. Pro-LLM: Read the freaking article, it's not that long. The compiler made a mistake in an area where only two compilers exist that are up to the task: Linux Kernel.
Anti-LLM: isn’t all this intelligence supposed to give us something better than what we already have?
Re: Claude’s C Compiler vs. GCC
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
And no-one ever stops and thinks about what it means to give up so much control. Maybe one of those companies will come out on top. The others produce garbage in comparison. Capital loves a single throat to choke and doesn't gently pluralise. So of course you buy the best service. And it really can generate any code, get it working, bug free. People unlearn coding on this level. And some day, poof, Microsoft is comin…
Nah bro it makes them productive. Get with the program. Amazing . Fantastic. Of course it resonates with idiots because they can't think beyond the vicinity of their own greed. We are doomed , noone gives two cents. Idiocracy is here and it's not Costco.
Sorry! Of course.
What an amazing tech. And look, the CEOs are promising us a good future! Maybe we can cool the datacenters with Brawndo. Let me ask chat if that is a good idea.
Re: Claude’s C Compiler vs. GCC
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
First off Alpha Evolve isn't an LLM. No more than a human is a kidney. Second depends. If you told them to pretrain for writing C compiler however long it takes, I could see a smaller team doing it in a week or two. Keep in mind LLMs pretrain on all OSS including GCC. > Meanwhile, at every step of the way these things become better and better. Will they? Or do they just ingest more data and compute?[1] Again, time wi…
> First off Alpha Evolve isn't an LLM. It's a system based on LLMs. > AlphaEvolve, an evolutionary coding agent powered by large language models for general-purpose algorithm discovery and optimization. AlphaEvolve pairs the creative problem-solving capabilities of our Gemini models with automated evaluators that verify answers, and uses an evolutionary framework to improve upon the most promising ideas. > AlphaEvolv…
It’s more like a concept car vs a production line model. The capabilities it has were fine tuned for a specific scenario and are not yet available to the general public.
Re: Claude’s C Compiler vs. GCC
#78As a neutral observation: it’s remarkable how quickly we as humans adjust expectations.
Imagine five years ago saying that you could have a general purpose AI write a c compiler that can handle the Linux kernel, by itself, from scratch for $20k by writing a simple English prompt.
That would have been completely unbelievable! Absurd! No one would take it seriously.
And now look at where we are.
Re: Claude’s C Compiler vs. GCC
#79I think this is a great example of both points of view in the ongoing debate. Pro-LLM coding agents: look! a working compiler built in a few hours by an agent! this is amazing! Anti-LLM coding agents: it's not a working compiler, though. And it doesn't matter how few hours it took, because it doesn't work. It's useless. Pro: Sure, but we can get the agent to fix that. Anti: Can you, though? We've seen that the more c…
Two thoughts here: First, remember when we had LLMs run optimisation passes last year? Alphaevolve doing square packing, and optimising ML kernels? The "anti" crowd was like "well, of course it can automatically optimise some code, that's easy". And things like "wake me up when it does hard tasks". Now, suddenly when they do hard tasks, we're back at "haha, but it's unoptimised and slow, laaame". Second, if you could…
You're heavily implying that because it can do this task, it can do any task at this difficulty or lower. Wrong. This thing isn't a human at the level of writing a compiler, and shouldn't be compared to one
Codex frustratingly failed at refactoring my tests for me the other day, despite me trying many, many prompts of increasing specificity. A task a junior could've done
Am I saying "haha it couldn't do a junior level task so therefor anything harder is out of reach?" No, of course not. Again, it's not a human. The comparison is irrelevant
Calculators are superhuman at arithmetic. Not much else, though. I predict this will be superhuman at some tasks (already is) and we'll be better at others
Re: Claude’s C Compiler vs. GCC
#80I think this is a great example of both points of view in the ongoing debate. Pro-LLM coding agents: look! a working compiler built in a few hours by an agent! this is amazing! Anti-LLM coding agents: it's not a working compiler, though. And it doesn't matter how few hours it took, because it doesn't work. It's useless. Pro: Sure, but we can get the agent to fix that. Anti: Can you, though? We've seen that the more c…
As an Anti, my argument is "if AI will good in future, then come back in the future"