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LLMs are now smart enough to simply download the code of any project they want to inspect. So this argument doesn't really hold up anymore …


Sure, but will they download the right version? And will they be inspecting the right files on disk? There's a whole lot more that can go wrong


Thanks! I'm using [Anki Panky](https://github.com/kamalsacranie/anki-panky) for generating the flashcards and then [Anki](https://apps.ankiweb.net/) itself for learning them.


I tried out numerous audio tagging apps (Kid3, Picard, …) and wasn't happy with any of them. They all try to work with some kind of library system of have a really bad UX (single line input for Lyrics???).

Therefore I decided to build one that is simple, fast, with great defaults: https://github.com/ad-si/Taguar

It's built with Rust's [Iced] and [lofty].

Looking forward to your feedback!

[Iced]: https://iced.rs [lofty]: https://github.com/Serial-ATA/lofty-rs


Mh, I thought about this a little and came actually to exactly the opposite conclusion: Implement as much as possible in Rust to get the fastest code possible. Do you have any more insights why this should not be possible / unsustainable?


You have two distinct products 1) An interpreter 2) a math language. Don't write your math in some funny imperative computer language.

Keep the interpreters surface area as small as possible. Do some work to make sure you can accelerate numeric, and JIT/compile functions down to something as close to native as you can.

Wolfram, and Taliesin Beynon have both said Wolfram were working internally to get a JIT working in the interpreter loop. Keep the core small, and do that now while it's easy.

Also, it's just easier to write in Mathematica. It's probably 10x smaller than the rust code:

    f[x_Integer]:=13*x;
    f::help:="Multiplies x by 13, in case you needed an easy function for that."
EDIT: Another important thing to note is the people who really deeply know specific subjects in math won't be the best, or even good rust programmers. So letting them program in woxilang will give the an opportunity to contribute which they wouldn't have had otherwise.


I'm not a PL expert but isn't building a decent JIT a massive undertaking? I guess you're saying that the JIT itself would be what makes a project like this worth using in the first place?


It's like most things in software, if you constrain the problem enough, focus on the problems you actually have and make some smart choices early on, it can be a very modest lift on the order of a week or two for a 90% solution, but on the other end of the spectrum, it's a lifetime of work for a team of hundreds...


Symbolic manipulation?


Why should I want them to use it?


Well it would get vastly more popular if it was officially endorsed. Do you want lots of people using it?


Why is that important?


Most humans like external validation. Having other people use what they've built is a common metric of validation in open source software. Economically, these metrics can be used as credentials for things like job applications or consideration in joining groups.


Because you get changes upstreamed.


They rebranded it to Wolfram Language a few years ago (which I actually appreciate, as it is so much more than just "math" by now!)

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2013/02/what-should-we-c...


Oh cool, haven't heard of this before. Could be a good fit - I'll have to try it out some day!


Such a massive undertaking would be almost impossible without AI agents, so yeah, they help me. But with around 5000 tests, they are actually helping to improve the software quality!


are all the tests hand written or are some agent-contributed? curious


What’s the difference if you review the code getting merged?


Reviewing the correctness of code is a lot harder than writing correct code, in my experience. Especially when the code given looks correct on an initial glance, and leads you into faulty assumptions you would not have made otherwise.

I'm not claiming AI-written and human-reviewed code is necessarily bad, just that the claim that reviewing code is equivalent to writing it yourself does not match my experience at all.


Plus if you look at the commit cadence there is a lot of commits like 5-10 minutes a part in places that add new functionality (which I realize doesn't mean they were "written" in that time)

I find people do argue a lot about "if it is reviewed it is the same" which might be easy when you start but I think the allure of just glancing going "it makes sense" and hammering on is super high and hard to resist.

We are still early into the use of these tools so perhaps best practices will need to be adjusted with these tools in mind. At the moment it seems to be a bit of a crap shoot to me.


eh with plenty of tests that I can easily read and are well documented I haven't actually ever found this to be a problem in practice


Code review basically never actually means thinking through all the code again as if you wrote it


The difference is we can't tell if you reviewed the code.


To be fair, we also couldn’t tell for sure if they hand-wrote the code.


If they hand wrote the code we know they at least looked at it once.


Since we can’t know whether they really hand-wrote the code, we also wouldn’t know whether they looked at it.


Err yeah that's the point.


You wrote: “If they hand wrote the code we know they at least looked at it once.”

But that’s not true, because even if they did indeed hand-write the code, we as third parties wouldn’t have any reliable proof of that, and therefore still couldn’t draw the conclusion that they looked at the code.

Them claiming to have hand-written the code isn’t any better than them claiming to have thoroughly reviewed the code. We can’t know in either case.


> Them claiming to have hand-written the code isn’t any better than them claiming to have thoroughly reviewed the code. We can’t know in either case.

It is better, because most people aren't out-right liars. If he said "I hand-wrote the code", sure it doesn't prove it, but I would believe him. When he says "I thoroughly reviewed the code"... yeah maybe. That's the sort of thing people do lie about (even to themselves).


you never can, thats the responsibility of the engineers to not lie. You can tell if there are sufficient tests and if they passed


i mean idk that's sorta like asking what's the difference of having tests if you review the code getting merged


Did you actually review 313,397 LOC written by claude? And you wrote the tests? That's honestly very impressive if yes.


According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Development_Corp._v._Bor...., a software clone does not infringe software copyright. So yeah, I'd guess sooner or later everything is going be cloned …


Sure, but you've got to start somewhere! And with the amount of progress I was able to make in just a few weeks, I'm very optimistic that the polish will come sooner rather than later.


Based on the list of contributors to your project, I am not sure this starting location is optimally suited to the task of building a foundation for polished, reliable, expandable software.


It's having ~ 5000 tests already. Used correctly, AI agents can help you improve the quality of the code!


Do you see why this perspective is a red flag on its own?


I certainly don't. If a software developer has found a way to use these tools that works well for them and produces good results, that's a good thing.


I have no dog in this fight, but simply claiming a count of tests get you anything is like saying your code coverage is 100% - it sounds really good until you think about what 5000 unreviewed tests actually... do.


No I don’t, review your code


If I go by the contributor numbers on Github, I see Claude has committed something on the order of 300,000 lines of code. I don't think it's reasonable to review that much code, even in weeks worth of time.


I haven’t needed to do such a thing in a while, but my “rule” for explaining how unreasonable is to say “if I only glanced at each line of code for 1 second, without bothering to understand the details, it would take me 3 and a half full 24hr days non stop to simply look at”. So it’s definitely more than 1 work week because presumably other stuff is going to need to get done in that time too. Actually understanding it is going to be at least a multiple of that, and probably the multiple is ~30x.


God help us.


The sneering on HN really has no end. This is a good project! I for one am very excited to see an interpreter born out of rust.


It’s so obnoxious


It's a defense mechanism. I was guilty as charge as well initially. Suddenly most of your l33t skillz are trivialized and surpassed by an inhumane actor. It's a tough pill to swallow.


In that case I kindly refer you to the matter of Arkell v. Pressdam.


i'm curious if you intend to reimplement highly optimized numerical algorithms, symbolic algorithms, and so on, accumulated and tuned in mathematica since its 1988 release?

it's a huuuuuuuuge amount of technology in the standard library of mathematica, beyond the surface syntax and rewrite system, i mean.


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