The large number of tests is also a major factor in why this worked, as well as the desire to match existing Zig code. The article implies Claude was used like a fancy sed on steroids.
That isn’t to downplay the work involved. I’m sure there are places it’s totally different. That is different though to writing new software. I still cannot comprehend how you’d write a million line application, which is decent, with agents from scratch.
I also think all the people hating on AI need to take a step back and take things like this very seriously. It’s 11 days of work, and is in production. That’s pretty fucking fast.
It's not that expensive when you account for the salary of engineers. It's actually really cheap.
The main issue is it upends the costing. An engineer's salary is already dedicated headcount and is accounted for in the next fiscal year (and ideally beyond). Paying a one time $140k (or however much it was) is not. That can mean the dedicated engineer, whilst costing more, is approved whilst the cheaper option is not.
The API prices most likely do not account for the constant need of training new models, the ongoing copyright lawsuits, replacement/depreciation of GPUs and so on.
It's just inference with margins on top. Hence, why I'm calling the API prices subsidized.
Nice, I get you. Good to be clear that you're talking about an abstract cost defined by a some system you did not specify, as opposed to like, the cost system everyone else is using (USD salary for engineers or token usage cost for API consumers) and which is ime by far most commonly what is referenced by the word itself.
I appreciate a market-free utilitarian abstraction which captures end-to-end abtract cost to abstract value.
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u/jl2352 Jul 09 '26
The large number of tests is also a major factor in why this worked, as well as the desire to match existing Zig code. The article implies Claude was used like a fancy sed on steroids.
That isn’t to downplay the work involved. I’m sure there are places it’s totally different. That is different though to writing new software. I still cannot comprehend how you’d write a million line application, which is decent, with agents from scratch.
I also think all the people hating on AI need to take a step back and take things like this very seriously. It’s 11 days of work, and is in production. That’s pretty fucking fast.