this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2026
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[–] lagrangeinterpolator@awful.systems 14 points 1 day ago (2 children)

This is why CCC being able to compile real C code at all is noteworthy. But it also explains why the output quality is far from what GCC produces. Building a compiler that parses C correctly is one thing. Building one that produces fast and efficient machine code is a completely different challenge.

Every single one of these failures is waved away because supposedly it's impressive that the AI can do this at all. Do they not realize the obvious problem with this argument? The AI has been trained on all the source code that Anthropic could get their grubby hands on! This includes GCC and clang and everything remotely resembling a C compiler! If I took every C compiler in existence, shoved them in a blender, and spent $20k on electricity blending them until the resulting slurry passed my test cases, should I be surprised or impressed that I got a shitty C compiler? If an actual person wrote this code, they would be justifiably mocked (or they're a student trying to learn by doing, and LLMs do not learn by doing). But AI gets a free pass because it's impressive that the slop can come in larger quantities now, I guess. These Models Will Improve. These Issues Will Get Fixed.

[–] V0ldek@awful.systems 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Building a compiler that parses C correctly is one thing. Building one that produces fast and efficient machine code is a completely different challenge.

Ye, the former can be done in a month of non-full-time work by an undergrad who took Compilers 101 this semester or in literally a single day by a professional, and the latter is an actual useful product.

So of course AI will excel at doing the first one worse (vibecc doesn't even reject invalid C) and at an insane resource cost.

[–] istewart@awful.systems 8 points 1 day ago

spent $20k on electricity blending them

They would probably be even more impressed that you only spent $20k