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Using Claude Code to modernize a 25-year-old kernel driver

dmitrybrant.com

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Re: Using Claude Code to modernize a 25-year-old kernel driver

#81

Post by zer00eyz »

abathologist wrote: post #37
kccqzy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more of a reflection of how our profession has not meaningfully advanced. OP talks about boilerplate. You talk about grunt work. We now have AI to do these things for us. But why do such things need to exist in the first place? Why hasn't there been a minimal-boilerplate language and framework and programming environment? Why haven't we collectively emphasized the creation of new tools to reduce boilerplate a…

This is the glaring fallacy! We are turning to unreliable stochastic agents to churn out boilerplate and do toil that should just be abstracted or automated away by fully deterministic, reliably correct programs. This is, prima facie, a degenerative and wasteful way to develop software.

> This is the glaring fallacy!

It feels like toil because it's not the interesting or engaging part of the work.

If you're going to build a piece of furniture. The cutting, nailing, gluing are the "boiler plate" that you have to do around the act of creation.

LLM's are just nail guns.

Re: Using Claude Code to modernize a 25-year-old kernel driver

#82

Post by incr_me »

DrewADesign wrote: post #77
lordhumphrey wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. We will not accept changes (code or otherwise) created with the aid of "AI" tooling. "AI" models are trained at the expense of underpaid workers filtering inputs of abhorrent content, and does not respect the owners of input content. Ethically, it sucks. Do you disagree with some part of the statement regarding "AI" in their CoC? Do you think there's a fault in their logic, or do you yourself personally just not…

[flagged]

> "AI" models are trained at the expense of underpaid workers filtering inputs of abhorrent content, and does not respect the owners of input content. Ethically, it sucks.

These ethics are definitely derived from a profit motive, however petty it may be.

Re: Using Claude Code to modernize a 25-year-old kernel driver

#83

Post by rmoriz »

QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #68
rmoriz wrote: post #56

I was banned from an OpenSource project [1] recently because I suggested a bug fix. Their „code of conduct“ not only prevents PRs but also comments on issues with information that was retrieved by any AI tool or resource. Thinking about asking Claude to reimplement it from scratch in Rust… [1] https://codeberg.org/superseriousbusiness/gotosocial/src/bra...

That must be so hard for you.

The bugs are on them. I‘ve fixed them in my fork but of course I‘ll migrate to a non-discriminating alternative.

Re: Using Claude Code to modernize a 25-year-old kernel driver

#84

Post by nurettin »

abathologist wrote: post #37
kccqzy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more of a reflection of how our profession has not meaningfully advanced. OP talks about boilerplate. You talk about grunt work. We now have AI to do these things for us. But why do such things need to exist in the first place? Why hasn't there been a minimal-boilerplate language and framework and programming environment? Why haven't we collectively emphasized the creation of new tools to reduce boilerplate a…

This is the glaring fallacy! We are turning to unreliable stochastic agents to churn out boilerplate and do toil that should just be abstracted or automated away by fully deterministic, reliably correct programs. This is, prima facie, a degenerative and wasteful way to develop software.

Great point, but there is absolutely no way of doing this for every framework and then maintain it for ages. It is logistically impossible.

Re: Using Claude Code to modernize a 25-year-old kernel driver

#86

Post by jama211 »

abathologist wrote: post #37
kccqzy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more of a reflection of how our profession has not meaningfully advanced. OP talks about boilerplate. You talk about grunt work. We now have AI to do these things for us. But why do such things need to exist in the first place? Why hasn't there been a minimal-boilerplate language and framework and programming environment? Why haven't we collectively emphasized the creation of new tools to reduce boilerplate a…

This is the glaring fallacy! We are turning to unreliable stochastic agents to churn out boilerplate and do toil that should just be abstracted or automated away by fully deterministic, reliably correct programs. This is, prima facie, a degenerative and wasteful way to develop software.

Saying boilerplate shouldn’t exist is like saying we shouldn’t need nails or screws if we just designed furniture to be cut perfectly as one piece from the tree. The response is “I mean, sure, that’d be great, not sure how you’ll actually accomplish that though”.

Re: Using Claude Code to modernize a 25-year-old kernel driver

#87

Post by [deleted] »

rmoriz wrote: post #60
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #52

Something not yet mentioned by other commenters is the "giant caveat": As a giant caveat, I should note that I have a small bit of prior experience working with kernel modules, and a good amount of experience with C in general, so I don’t want to overstate Claude’s success in this scenario. As in, it wasn’t literally three prompts to get Claude to poop out a working kernel module, but rather several back-and-forth co…

Gatekeeping is toxic. I love agents explaining me projects I don‘t know. Recently I cloned sources of Firefox and asked qwen-code (tool not significant) about the AI features of Firefox and how it‘s implemented. Learning has become awesome.

[deleted]

Re: Using Claude Code to modernize a 25-year-old kernel driver

#88

Post by [deleted] »

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #66
rmoriz wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gatekeeping is toxic. I love agents explaining me projects I don‘t know. Recently I cloned sources of Firefox and asked qwen-code (tool not significant) about the AI features of Firefox and how it‘s implemented. Learning has become awesome.

> Gatekeeping is toxic. Learning what must be done to implement a device driver in order for it to operate properly is not "gatekeeping." It is a prerequisite. > I love agents explaining me projects I don‘t know. Awesome. This is one way to learn about implementations and I applaud you for benefiting from same. > Recently I cloned sources of Firefox and asked qwen-code (tool not significant) about the AI features of…

[deleted]

Re: Using Claude Code to modernize a 25-year-old kernel driver

#89

Post by BestHackerOnHN »

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #66
rmoriz wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gatekeeping is toxic. I love agents explaining me projects I don‘t know. Recently I cloned sources of Firefox and asked qwen-code (tool not significant) about the AI features of Firefox and how it‘s implemented. Learning has become awesome.

> Gatekeeping is toxic. Learning what must be done to implement a device driver in order for it to operate properly is not "gatekeeping." It is a prerequisite. > I love agents explaining me projects I don‘t know. Awesome. This is one way to learn about implementations and I applaud you for benefiting from same. > Recently I cloned sources of Firefox and asked qwen-code (tool not significant) about the AI features of…

[dead]

Re: Using Claude Code to modernize a 25-year-old kernel driver

#90

Post by bandrami »

Brendinooo wrote: post #13

When I read an article like this it makes me think about how the demand for work to be done was nowhere close to being fully supplied by the pre-LLM status quo.

IDK, the bottleneck really still seems to be "marketable ideas" rather than their implementation. There's only so much stuff people are willing to actually pay for.
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