Comment by rhubarbtree
21 days ago
Interesting, why impossible? We studied compiler construction at uni. I might have to dig out a few books, but I’m confident I could write one. I can’t imagine anyone on my course of 120 nerds being unable to do this.
You are underestimating the complexity of the task so do other people on the thread. It's not trivial to implement a working C compiler very much so to implement the one that proves its worth by successfully compiling one of the largest open-source code repositories ever, which btw is not even a plain ISO C dialect.
I didn’t say it was trivial. Just that I thought my course mates would be able to do it.
You thought your course mates would be able to write a C compiler that builds the Linux?
Huh. Interesting. Like the other guy pointed out, compiler classes often get students to write toy C compilers. I think a lot of students don't understand the meaning of the word "toy". I think this thread is FULL of people like that.
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They did bot compile the whole linux, mind you, just an absolute minimal kernel.
Doing a real compiler to be used by humans is difficult. Doing a compiler that “gets the thing done” is a different thing.
Nowhere did I imply it is production-ready. I said "working compiler" and by definition Claude built one since they booted up the kernel.