Vish Abrams

1/ Update from my agent-built c++ compiler project: I've had multiple end-to-end runs that reach self-hosting with no-human intervention. One was good enough for me to completely replace my reference implementation.

1/ I got nerd-sniped by a C++ compiler course 13 years ago and quit when the next step turned into a tedious parser refactor. A few months ago I handed the old code to Codex. It finished the refactor in about an hour.

8/ My current read: agents handle tedium well. They also take the easy path. Humans need contracts and gates that make that path land in the right place.

1/ I got nerd-sniped by a C++ compiler course 13 years ago and quit when the next step turned into a tedious parser refactor. A few months ago I handed the old code to Codex. It finished the refactor in about an hour.

6/ Micro-optimization did not fix that. The useful fixes were structural: split the template layer, remove text fallbacks, thread typed data through, and force each hidden case into the tests.

1/ I got nerd-sniped by a C++ compiler course 13 years ago and quit when the next step turned into a tedious parser refactor. A few months ago I handed the old code to Codex. It finished the refactor in about an hour.

4/ I kept going and built the missing half of the course: 28 more assignments that take the compiler from PA9 to self-hosting C++. Each assignment has instructions, a reference implementation, and acceptance tests.

1/ I got nerd-sniped by a C++ compiler course 13 years ago and quit when the next step turned into a tedious parser refactor. A few months ago I handed the old code to Codex. It finished the refactor in about an hour.

2/ I got curious. I asked it to finish the remaining original assignments. It did. Then I packaged the course into a repo, pointed agents at it, and watched frontier models work through the whole nine-assignment gauntlet with little steering.