4 ms·

This is very much a "vibe coding can build you the Great Pyramids but it can't build a cathedral" situation, as described earlier today: https://news.ycombinato

This is very much a "vibe coding can build you the Great Pyramids but it can't build a cathedral" situation, as described earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46898223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46898223 I know this is an impressive accomplishment and is meant to show us the future potential, but it achieves big results by throwing an insane amount of compute at the problem, brute forcing its way to functionality. $20,000 set on fire, at Claude's discounted Max pricing no less. Linear results from exponential compute is not nothing, but this certain feels like a dead end approach. The frontier should be more complexity for less compute, not more complexity from an insane amount more compute.

Philpax 9mo ago
> $20,000 in API costs I would interpret this as being at API pricing. At subscription pricing, it's probably at most 5 or 6 Max subscriptions worth.
ajross 9mo ago
> $20,000 set on fire To be fair, that's two weeks of the employer cost of a FAANG engineer's labor. And no human hacks a working compiler in two weeks. It's a lot of AI compute for a demo, sure. But $20k stunts are hardly unique. Clearly there's value being demonstrated here.
- pcloadlett3r 9mo ago
  Is there really value being presented here? Is this codebase a stable enough base to continue developing this compiler or does it warrant a total rewrite? Honest question, it seems like the author mentioned it being at its limits. This mirrors my own experience with Opus in that it isn't that great at defining abstractions in one-shot at least. Maybe with enough loops it could converge but I haven't seen definite proof of that in current generation with these ambitious clickbaity projects.
  - ajross 9mo ago
    If it generates a booting kernel and passes the test suite at 99% it's probably good enough to use, yeah. The point isn't to replace GCC per se, it's to demonstrate that reasonably working software of equivalent complexity is within reach for $20k to solve whatever problem it is you do have.
    - pcloadlett3r 9mo ago
      > it's probably good enough to use, yea. Not for general purpose use, only for demo. > that reasonably working software of equivalent complexity is within reach for $20k to solve But if this can't come close to replacing GCC and can't be modified without introducing bugs then it hasn't proven this yet. I learned some new hacks from the paper and that's great and all but from my experiencing of trying to harness even 4 claude sessions in parallel on a complex task it just goes off the rails in terms of coherence. I'll try the new techniques but my intuition is that its not really as good as you are selling it.
      - ajross 9mo ago
        > Not for general purpose use, only for demo. What does that mean, though? I mean, it's already meeting a very high quality bar by booting at all and passing those tests. No, it doesn't beat existing solutions on all the checkboxes, but that's not what the demo is about. The point being demonstrated is that if you need a "custom compiler" or something similar for your own new, greenfield requirement, you can have it at pretty-clearly-near-shippable quality in two weeks for $20k. And if people can't smell the disruption there, I don't know what to say.
        vuciuc 9mo ago
        > you can have it at pretty-clearly-near-shippable quality in two weeks for $20k. if you spend months writing a tight spec, tests and have a better version of the compiler around to use when everything else fails.
- lionkor 9mo ago
  Yes a human can hack together a compiler in two weeks. If you can't, you should turn off the AI and learn for yourself for a while. Writing a compiler is not a flex; it's a couple very well understood problems, most of which can be solved using existing libraries. Parsing is solved with yacc, bison, or sitting down and writing a recursive descent parser (works for most well designed languages you can think of). Then take your AST and translate it to an IR, and then feed that into anything that generates code. You could use crainlift or whatever it's called, you could roll your own.
  - Anon1096 9mo ago
    Meanwhile: > I spent a good part of my career (nearly a decade) at Google working on getting Clang to build the linux kernel. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46905771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46905771
    - latexr 9mo ago
      If you spend a decade working on something, you’re not “hacking it”.
    - lionkor 9mo ago
      Afaik the Linux Kernel strongly depends on GCC extensions and GCC specific behavior, so maybe that's why this is such an interesting part? Also extensions like inline assembly seem wildly complicated to add to an existing compiler WHILE replicating the syntax and semantics of another compiler (which has a different software architecture).
  - ajross 9mo ago
    > Parsing is solved with yacc, bison, or sitting down and writing a recursive descent parser (works for most well designed languages you can think of). No human being writes a recursive descent parser for "Linux Kernel C" in two weeks, though. And AFAIK there's no downloadable BNF for that you can hand to an automatic generator either, you have to write it and test it and refine it. And you can't do it in two weeks. Yes yes, we all know how to write a compiler because we took a class on it. That's like "Elite CS Nerd Basic Admission". We still can't actually do it at the cost being demonstrated, and you know it.
- a456463 9mo ago
  Humans can hack a compiler in much less. Stop reading this hype and focus on learning

Philpax 9mo ago

> $20,000 in API costs I would interpret this as being at API pricing. At subscription pricing, it's probably at most 5 or 6 Max subscriptions worth.

ajross 9mo ago

> $20,000 set on fire To be fair, that's two weeks of the employer cost of a FAANG engineer's labor. And no human hacks a working compiler in two weeks. It's a lot of AI compute for a demo, sure. But $20k stunts are hardly unique. Clearly there's value being demonstrated here.

pcloadlett3r 9mo ago
Is there really value being presented here? Is this codebase a stable enough base to continue developing this compiler or does it warrant a total rewrite? Honest question, it seems like the author mentioned it being at its limits. This mirrors my own experience with Opus in that it isn't that great at defining abstractions in one-shot at least. Maybe with enough loops it could converge but I haven't seen definite proof of that in current generation with these ambitious clickbaity projects.
- ajross 9mo ago
  If it generates a booting kernel and passes the test suite at 99% it's probably good enough to use, yeah. The point isn't to replace GCC per se, it's to demonstrate that reasonably working software of equivalent complexity is within reach for $20k to solve whatever problem it is you do have.
  - pcloadlett3r 9mo ago
    > it's probably good enough to use, yea. Not for general purpose use, only for demo. > that reasonably working software of equivalent complexity is within reach for $20k to solve But if this can't come close to replacing GCC and can't be modified without introducing bugs then it hasn't proven this yet. I learned some new hacks from the paper and that's great and all but from my experiencing of trying to harness even 4 claude sessions in parallel on a complex task it just goes off the rails in terms of coherence. I'll try the new techniques but my intuition is that its not really as good as you are selling it.
    - ajross 9mo ago
      > Not for general purpose use, only for demo. What does that mean, though? I mean, it's already meeting a very high quality bar by booting at all and passing those tests. No, it doesn't beat existing solutions on all the checkboxes, but that's not what the demo is about. The point being demonstrated is that if you need a "custom compiler" or something similar for your own new, greenfield requirement, you can have it at pretty-clearly-near-shippable quality in two weeks for $20k. And if people can't smell the disruption there, I don't know what to say.
      - vuciuc 9mo ago
        > you can have it at pretty-clearly-near-shippable quality in two weeks for $20k. if you spend months writing a tight spec, tests and have a better version of the compiler around to use when everything else fails.
lionkor 9mo ago
Yes a human can hack together a compiler in two weeks. If you can't, you should turn off the AI and learn for yourself for a while. Writing a compiler is not a flex; it's a couple very well understood problems, most of which can be solved using existing libraries. Parsing is solved with yacc, bison, or sitting down and writing a recursive descent parser (works for most well designed languages you can think of). Then take your AST and translate it to an IR, and then feed that into anything that generates code. You could use crainlift or whatever it's called, you could roll your own.
- Anon1096 9mo ago
  Meanwhile: > I spent a good part of my career (nearly a decade) at Google working on getting Clang to build the linux kernel. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46905771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46905771
  - latexr 9mo ago
    If you spend a decade working on something, you’re not “hacking it”.
  - lionkor 9mo ago
    Afaik the Linux Kernel strongly depends on GCC extensions and GCC specific behavior, so maybe that's why this is such an interesting part? Also extensions like inline assembly seem wildly complicated to add to an existing compiler WHILE replicating the syntax and semantics of another compiler (which has a different software architecture).
- ajross 9mo ago
  > Parsing is solved with yacc, bison, or sitting down and writing a recursive descent parser (works for most well designed languages you can think of). No human being writes a recursive descent parser for "Linux Kernel C" in two weeks, though. And AFAIK there's no downloadable BNF for that you can hand to an automatic generator either, you have to write it and test it and refine it. And you can't do it in two weeks. Yes yes, we all know how to write a compiler because we took a class on it. That's like "Elite CS Nerd Basic Admission". We still can't actually do it at the cost being demonstrated, and you know it.
a456463 9mo ago
Humans can hack a compiler in much less. Stop reading this hype and focus on learning