Path: csiph.com!weretis.net!feeder9.news.weretis.net!news.misty.com!news.iecc.com!.POSTED.news.iecc.com!nerds-end From: anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at Newsgroups: comp.compilers Subject: Re: EDG open source C++ front end Date: Mon, 05 Oct 2026 17:33:29 +0000 Organization: Compilers Central Sender: johnl%iecc.com Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com Message-ID: <26-10-006@comp.compilers> References: <26-10-002@comp.compilers> <26-10-003@comp.compilers> <26-10-004@comp.compilers> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Injection-Info: gal.iecc.com; posting-host="news.iecc.com:2001:470:1f07:1126:0:676f:7373:6970"; logging-data="1020"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@iecc.com" Keywords: tools, comment Posted-Date: 05 Oct 2026 15:14:29 EDT X-submission-address: compilers@iecc.com X-moderator-address: compilers-request@iecc.com X-FAQ-and-archives: http://compilers.iecc.com Xref: csiph.com comp.compilers:3771 Derek M Jones writes: >> There seems to be lots of money in gcc and LLVM development, and this >> money comes from commercial interests, so they are commercial > >The gcc people and llvm people I spoke to about funding, some >years ago, said that funding was hard to come by. Maybe. But it did come. They don't work on these compilers for free. >Nowadays, there are lots of companies building new 'AI' chips, >so demand has picked up. Or rather, job opportunities. If that has increased for them, that's an answer to: >>> Is there a future for programming languages. >>> Coding agents could cut out the middle man and go >>> direct to assembler. >> >> For now, they don't, for whatever reason. And the code they generate >> is stored in version control systems, not the prompts. > >It does not matter where the code is stored. My sentence was phrased in a misleading way. What I meant is: Not the prompts (or not only), but primarily the generated code is stored in the version control systems. I.e., the companies that use AI in programming see a value in the code in a language that's higher-level than assembly language or machine code. >To generate training data the model builders could use >existing compilers to generate assembler, then feed this >into model training. What would the advantage be? Can the LLM generate the assembly language more cheaply than what we get with the workflow that AI generates "high-level code and the compiler generates assembly/machine code"? What about human review that still happens AFAIK? What about programs that need to run on several architectures? - anton -- M. Anton Ertl anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/ [I think that last point is important -- writing code that compiles cleanly to several modern architectures like amd64 and arm is easy, asking an LLM to do it, who knows? -John]