Comment by keepamovin
3 hours ago
Yes! I'm currently using copilot + antigravity to implement a language with ergonomic syntax and semantics that lowers cleanly to machine code targeting multiple platforms, with a focus on safety, determinism, auditability and fail-fast bugs. It's more work than I thought but the LLMs are very capable.
I was dreaming of a JS to machine code, but then thought, why not just start from scratch and have what I want? It's a lot of fun.
What's the point of making something like this if you don't get to deeply understand what your doing?
I want something I can use, and something useful. It's not just a learning exercise. I get to understand it by following along.
If they go far enough with it they will be forced to understand it deeply. The LLM provides more leverage at the beginning because this level is a final project for a first semester PL course, therefore there are a billion examples of “vaguely Java/Python/C imperative language with objects and functions” to train the LLM on.
Ultimately though, the LLM is going to become less useful as the language grows past its capabilities. If the language author doesn’t have a sufficient map of the language and a solid plan at that point, it will be the blind leading the blind. Which is how most lang dev goes so it should all work out.
How deep do you need to know?
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
At least for me that fits. I have quite enough graduate-level knowledge of physics, math, and computer science to rarely be stumped by a research paper or anything an LLM spits out. That may get me scorn from those tested on those subjects. Yet, I'm still an effective ignoramus.
What's the point of owning a car if you don't build it by hand yourself?
Anyway, all it will do is stop you being able to run as well as you used to be able to do when you had to go everywhere on foot.
What is the point of car that on Mondays changes colour to blue and on each first Friday of the year explodes?
If neither you not anyone else can fix it, without more cost than making a proper one?
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I have made a lot of things using LLMs and I fully understood everything. It is doable.
Curious why you do this with AI instead of just writing it yourself?
You should be able to whip up a Lexer, Parser and compiler with a couple weeks of time.
It would be very new to me. I'd have to learn a lot to do that. And I can't spare the time or attention. It's more of a fun side project.
The machine code would also be tedious, tho fun. But I really can't spare the time for it.
Because he did it in a day, not a few weeks.
If I want to go from Bristol to Swindon, I could walk there in about 12 hours. It's totally possible to do it by foot. Or I could use a car and be there in an hour. There and back, with a full work day in-between done, in a day. Using the tool doesn't change what you can do, it speeds up getting the end result.
If you could also automate away the reason for being in Swindon in the first place, would you still go?
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There is no end result. It's a toy language based on a couple of examples without a grammar where apparently the LLM used its standard (plagiarized) parser/lexer code and reiterated until the examples passed.
Automating one of the fun parts of CS is just weird.
So with this awesome "productivity" we now can have 10,000 new toy languages per day on GitHub instead of just 100?
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I'm not the previous user, but I imagine that weeks of investment might be a commitment one does not have.
I have implemented an interpreter for a very basic stack-based language (you can imagine it being one of the simplest interpreters you can have) and it took me a lot of time and effort to have something solid and functional.
Thus I can absolutely relate to the idea of having an LLM who's seen many interpreters lay out the ground for you and make you play as quickly as possible with your ideas while procrastinating delving in details till necessary.
Because this is someone in a "spiral" or "AI psychosis" Its pretty clear by how they are talking.