logoalt Hacker News

runarbergtoday at 12:50 AM1 replyview on HN

Your logic sounds like willful ignorance. You are relying on some odd definitions of "definitions", "equivalence", and "procedures". These are all rigorously defined in the underlying theory of computer science (using formal logic, lambda calculus, etc.)

Claude and Gemini do not "do the same thing" in the same way in which Clang and GCC does the same thing with the same code (as long as certain axioms of the code holds).

The C Standard has been rigorously written to uphold certain principles such that the same code (following its axioms) will always produce the same results (under specified conditions) for any standard compliant compiler. There exists no such standard (and no axioms nor conditions to speak of) where the same is true of Claude and Gemini.

If you are interested, you can read the standard here (after purchasing access): https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso-iec:9899:ed-5:v1:en


Replies

hackyhackytoday at 1:07 AM

> Claude and Gemini do not "do the same thing" in the same way in which Clang and GCC does the same thing with the same code (as long as certain axioms of the code holds).

True, but none of that is relevant to the non-programmer end user.

> You are relying on some odd definitions of "definitions", "equivalence", and "procedures"

These terms have rigorous definitions for programmers. The person making software in the future is a non-programmer and doesn't care about any of that. They care only that the LLM can produce what they asked for.

> The C Standard has been rigorously written to uphold certain principles

I know what a standard is. The point is that the standard is irrelevant if you never look at the code.

show 1 reply