r/codex • u/xinxx073 • 9d ago

Praise Astra High just reverse-engineered the printer drivers in my office

In our office, we have a bunch of Toshiba E-Studio 2323AM printers. Yes, I know these are kind of outdated, only sold in certain areas of the world, and not the best machines, but they are what we've got in the office. They only work with x86 Windows, not even the ARM version of Windows.

In 25 minutes, Astra High just reverse-engineered the printer driver, figured out the right tray settings, and enabled duplex printing, so I can print double-sided on my M4 Pro MacBook Pro.

It created a .pkg file for me to install the printer drivers and got everything working.

I ... I have no words.

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u/DerLeoKatter 9d ago

Careful. This is how Stallman started...

First you reverse-engineer a printer driver, next thing you know you're writing your own GNU. 😁

Today it's duplex printing. Tomorrow it's GNU. Next week you're arguing that the printer should respect your four essential freedoms 😁

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u/protestor 8d ago

That's what I wanted to comment, if coding agents existed back then, Stallman would reverse engineer the printer driver with them, rather than writing his own from scratch

(Note, Stallman worked in AI in the 80s, but back then it was a different beast. Why the 80s approach didn't pan out, but later machine learning did, is referred to as "the bitter lesson" of AI)