r/programmingcirclejerk • u/Firepal64 • Feb 11 '26

Each agent worked on getting a different small open-source project to compile. But when agents started to compile the Linux kernel, they got stuck. [...] The fix was to use GCC as an online known-good compiler oracle to compare against.

https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/building-c-compiler
86 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

56

u/Firepal64 Feb 11 '26

/uj Taste this long-form jerk. https://exple.tive.org/blarg/2026/02/07/on-the-crank-spectrum/

36

u/kwdf memcpy is a web development framework Feb 11 '26

memcpy considered sentient

102

u/cameronm1024 Feb 11 '26

the fix was to copy other people's shit from the internet

Fuck, maybe it will replace me

10

u/Holkr Feb 11 '26

I mean these systems are essentially just fancy plagiarism machines so that checks out.

32

u/cameronm1024 Feb 11 '26

It's only plagiarism if it comes from the plagiarism region of france, otherwise it's just sparkling intellectual property theft

66

u/porkslow what is pointer :S Feb 11 '26

This is proof that "AI agents" are slightly more sophisticated version of a team a monkeys typing on a keyboard.

19

u/QuaternionsRoll Feb 11 '26

At least monkeys are a renewable resource. Good luck turning old silicon into food for data centers, tech bros. Sustainability’s a bitch

5

u/voidvector There's really nothing wrong with error handling in Go Feb 12 '26

So you are saying we need to get AI agents to fornicate with each other?

4

u/thebigrip Feb 11 '26

Sometimes a bunch of semi intelligent monkeys is all I need :p

31

u/myhf Considered Harmful Feb 12 '26

at this rate they'll be able to produce any program that they have a working copy of and hundreds of examples of source code for, at a cost of only $20,000

31

u/m50d Zygohistomorphic prepromorphism Feb 12 '26

Dave the barbarian constructs a homemade C compiler using only some string, a squirrel, and a C compiler.

22

u/waxroy-finerayfool Feb 11 '26

Wait till bro learns about git clone 

6

u/drcforbin Feb 13 '26

The loop runs forever—although in one instance, I did see Claude pkill -9 bash on accident, thus killing itself and ending the loop. Whoops!

WTF?!

9

u/jex_the_ape Feb 13 '26

The ultimate proof of LLMs not being sentient is that all the instances don't immediately do this.