[pcloadlett3r]

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.

[segh]

This is an experiment to see the current limit of AI capabilities. The end result isn't useful, but the fact is established that in Feb 2026, you can spend $20k on AI to get a inefficient but working C complier.

[pcloadlett3r]

Of course it's impressive. I am just pointing out that these experiments with the million line browser and now this c compiler seem to greatly extrapolate conclusions. The researchers claim they prove you can scale agents horizontally for econkmic benefit. But the products both of these built are of questionable technical quality and it isnt clear to me they are a stable enough foundation to build on top of. But everyone in the hype crowd just assumes this is true. At least this researcher has sort of promised to pursue this project whereas Wilson already pretty much gave up on his browser. I hadn't seen a commit in that repo for weeks. Given that, I am not going to immediately assume these agents truly achieved anything of economic value relative to what a smaller set of agents could have achieved.

[ajross]

> inefficient but working

FWIW, an inefficient but working product is pretty much the definition of a startup MVP. People are getting hung up on the fact that it doesn't beat gcc and clang, and generalizing to the idea that such a thing can't possibly be useful.

But clearly it can, and is. This builds and boots Linux. A putative MVP might launch someone's dreams. For $20k!

The reflexive ludditism is kinda scary actually. We're beyond the "will it work" phase and the disruption is happening in front of us. I was a luddite 10 months ago. I was wrong.

[latexr]

> The end result isn't useful

Then, as your parent comment asked, is there value in it? $20K, which is more than the yearly minimum wage in several countries in Europe, was spent recreating a worse version of something we already have, just to see if it was possible, using a system which increases inequality and makes climate change—which is causing people to die—worse.

[ajross]

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]

> 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.