alt Hacker NewsI have been working on a sub 1500 line rust init system for over a week. Hundreds of prompts. All with a local LLM running on my own GPUs because I expect to build with total sovereignty but also zero dependencies, no libc, no alloc, no std, and a test suite that proves the 20 implemented raw syscalls all use the right values by comparing against Linux kernel sources. This would be the only privileged code in my operating system so I must have absolute confidence it is perfect.
It would be too annoying for a human to ever write code to standards this high, and would have taken me months to write by hand, but with the help of AI I was able to get it done and built in a way I can easily review and reason about.
I have a memory safe baremetal tiny linux init now built to my exact requirements.
AI can help experienced engineers write better code in less time.
Replies
> This would be the only privileged code in my operating system
What does that mean? Are you building a system without a root user or something?
Cool, but I fail to see how it is relevant in the context of the article? You clearly have the knowledge, expertise and discipline to incorporate LLM in a workflow that, taking your word for it, delivers a very good result.
That makes you a) more unique than you realize b) not all that relevant in the context of the article.
a) Because a lot of people tend to lean towards use that absolutely leads to atrophying of skills and knowledge. b) well the article does explain the criteria it used fairly well and your project would not show up there. Well, also because your project isn't an android app.
> It would be too annoying for a human to ever write code to standards this high,
These are standards of a normal university operating systems course (assuming a university worth its salt anyway). Ridiculous to present it as some kind of feat that was "impossible" or even that rare.
I don’t even disagree that “AI can help experienced engineers write better code in less time”, but “It would be too annoying for a human to ever write code to standards this high” when the standards are “zero dependencies, no libc, no alloc, no std, and [correctness]” and the project is <1500 lines of Rust implementing 20 syscalls is a little much. All software ever written before 2023 was written by humans, remember?