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Without being glib, I honestly wonder if Fabrice Bellard has started using any LLM coding tools. If he could be even more productive, that would be scary! I d
by chubot 10mo ago
Without being glib, I honestly wonder if Fabrice Bellard has started using any LLM coding tools. If he could be even more productive, that would be scary!
I doubt he is ideologically opposed to them, given his work on LLM compression [1]
He codes mostly in C, which I'm sure is mostly "memorized". i.e. if you have been programming in C for a few decades, you almost certainly have a deep bench of your own code that you routinely go back to / copy and modify
In most cases, I don't see an LLM helping there. It could be "out of distribution", similar to what Karpathy said about writing his end-to-end pedagogical LLM chatbot
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Now that I think of it, Bellard would probably train his own LLM on his own code! The rest of the world's code might not help that much :-)
He has all the knowledge to do that ... I could see that becoming a paid closed-source project, like some of his other ones [2]
[1] e.g. https://bellard.org/ts_zip/ https://bellard.org/ts_zip/
[2] https://bellard.org/lte/ https://bellard.org/lte/
- MrDrMcCoy 10mo agoHe has in fact written one: https://bellard.org/ts_server/ https://bellard.org/ts_server/
- chubot 10mo agoYeah I've seen that, but it looks like the inference-side only? Maybe that is a hint that he does use off-the-shelf models as a coding aid? There may be no need to train your own, on your own code, but it's fun to think about
- zelphirkalt 10mo agoAre you saying a LFM could be a good idea? A Large Fabrice Model?
- latenightcoding 10mo agoWhat I wonder is: are current LLMs even good for the type of work he does: novel, low-level, extremely performant
- koakuma-chan 10mo agoNo
- wolttam 10mo agoIf Fabrice explained what he wanted, I expect the LLM would respond in kind.
- vasco 10mo agoIf Fabrice explained what he wanted the LLM would say it's not possible. When the coding assistant LLMs load for a while it's because they are sending Fabrice an email and he corrects it and replies synchronously.
- slekker 10mo agoI doubt it, although LLMs seem to do well on low-level (ASM level instructions).
- vitaminCPP 10mo agoAs a professional C programmer, the answer seems to be no; they are not good enough.
- checker659 10mo agoThey are absolutely good at reviewing C code. To catch stupid bugs and such. Great for pair programming type use.
- rjzzleep 10mo agoFrom my experience, it's just good enough to give you a code overview of a codebase you don't know and give you enough implementation suggests to work from there.
- mhh__ 10mo agoThis is a funny one because on the one hand the answer is obviously no, it's very fiddly stuff that requires a lot of umming and ahhing, but then weirdly they can be absurdly good in these kinds of highly technical domains precisely because they are often simple enough to pose to the LLM that any help it can give is actually applicable immediately whereas in a comparatively boring/trivial enterprise application there is a vast amount of external context to grapple with.
- gyomu 10mo ago> I honestly wonder if Fabrice Bellard has started using any LLM coding tools. If he could be even more productive, that would be scary! That’s kind of a weird speculation to make about creative people and their processes. If Caravaggio had had a computer with Photoshop, if Eintein had had a computer with Matlab, would they have been more productive? Is it a question that even makes sense?
- lomase 10mo agoMatlab has been proven to be a indispensable tool in many fields. AI is the same, for example creating slop or virtual girlfriends.
- Kiro 10mo ago> Is it a question that even makes sense? Absolutely. It's a very intriguing thought invoking the opposite of the point you're trying to make.
- nextaccountic 10mo agoMaybe today Bellard uses LLMs though
- rdtsc 10mo ago> Without being glib, I honestly wonder if Fabrice Bellard has started using any LLM coding tools I doubt it. I follow him and look at the code he writes and it's well thought out and organized. It's the exact opposite of AI slop I see everywhere. > He codes mostly in C, which I'm sure is mostly "memorized". i.e. if you have been programming in C for a few decades, C I think he memorized a long time ago. It's more like he keeps the whole structure and setup of the program (the context) in his head and is able to "see it" all and operate on it. He is so good that people are insinuating he is actually "multiple people" or he uses an LLM and so on. I imagine he is quite amused reading those comments.
- MangoToupe 10mo agoStill, humans can only type so quickly. It's not hard to imagine how even a flawless coder could benefit from an llm.
- dmitrygr 10mo ago> humans can only type so quickly Real programming is 0.1% typing. Typing speed is not a limiting factor for any serious development.
- MangoToupe 10mo agoYou're conflating typing with programming. Typing is in fact the limiting factor to serious development.
- lomase 10mo agoWhy every single post in HN has to come down to talk about AI sloop...
- raverbashing 10mo agoI think it's the opposite: llms ask Fabrice Bellard instead
- echelon 10mo agoThey're trained on his code for sure. Every time I ask about ffmpeg internals, I know it's Fabrice's training data.
- jacquesm 10mo agoCongrats, the Chuck Norris meme has finally made its way onto HN.
- throwup238 10mo agoFabrice Bellard is far more deserving of the honor that ol’ Chucky.
- jacquesm 10mo agoTough choice: Knuth, Bellard, Norvig...
- agumonkey 10mo agoSome talented people (mitsuhiko, Evan you) seem to leverage LLM their own way. Probably as legwork mostly.
- globalnode 10mo agoIs Fabrice like the Chuck Norris of programming?
- Renaud 10mo agoHopefully without the politics…
- actionfromafar 10mo agoIn Soviet Russia, politics find you.
- furbdiba 10mo agoKeep in mind even if someone writes their own code LLM is great to accelerate: tests, makefiles, docs, etc. Or it can review for any subtle bugs too. :)
- throwaway2037 10mo agoIn 2025, there is no shame in using an LLM. For example, he might use it to get help debugging, or ask if a block of code can be written more clearly or efficiently.