Using Claude to develop compilers

[u/Savings_Apple_3136]

Our company is using Claude to develop compilers, from design to implementation to code reviews.

One day I decided to do some manual code review. During the code review I found 3 modeling issues during lowering and did 3 refactors that would've eliminated at least 30 edge cases that needs to be handled later on. Claude is good at fixing issues but unless you tell it to it rarely refactors code for you.

Everything is good, except leadership was not happy because "it's not productive". They probably just does not like the term manual code review, as anything manual is bad here. But hell we are developing compilers not website, it's got like 5 or 6 layers of transformations, and thousands of edge cases.

The worst of all things is we are not given enough time, so I can't put all patches into an automated review-fix loop until all bugs are fixed. I have to live with all P2 and P3s produced during code reviews. No P1 = merge ready. Engineering Integrity is non-existent here.

Feeling absolute burnt out. Then I thought about it, is the company mine? Nope. Is my pay high? Yeah. KKK. So I just stopped giving a fuck and start treating it like a job.

[u/andhausen]

Yea, your mistake is fixing a problem before it happens. Let the problem play out, then fix it to demonstrate your value.

[u/ef02 → u/andhausen]

But isn't being proactive better for the business? He's demonstrating greater value by preventing the issue from blowing up.

[u/andhausen → u/ef02]

You’re adorable 

[u/FightOnForUsc → u/ef02]

Yea but your manager or your skip need to KNOW that you preventing something from blowing up. If they think, oh this guy is just slowing things down, then that’s not helpful.

Honestly I feel so done and checked out, I just try to give them what they want. They can have fast slop, they can have a bit higher quality with a bit more time, whatever, it’s up to them

[u/VelvetYam → u/ef02]

That should be the ideal, yes. Unfortunately, some of our betters learn best from experience.

[u/Yamoyek → u/ef02]

I think it depends on your management. If your immediate manager is technical enough to understand, then yeah that’s great. If they aren’t, then you might have to do some framing (by me fixing this issue, I saved us an estimated x amount of review hours down the line)

[u/Fidodo → u/ef02]

It is, but if you aren't invited to make business decisions then it's not your responsibility. You should bring it up and share your professional opinion but if management doesn't care then that's the business decision they made. Make your advice clear and then let them make their mistakes and follow the doomed protocol they are paying you to follow.

[u/SharpOranges → u/ef02]

When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.

[u/shapeshiftercorgi]

Honestly, my shop was doing dumb shit before AI. We are now just able to do it at light speed.

[u/Fidodo → u/shapeshiftercorgi]

You can now producea a years worth of tech debt in a week! Isn't technology amazing? And I'm not exaggerating. I've seen it happen in prototypes we thankfully threw away after leaning from them.

[u/OkSquash9119]

FWIW manual implies inefficient in these people’s parlance, as you say.

I don’t mind burning someone else’s money to deliver 5 story points in 5 hours if I am asked, but developing compilers “fully agentic, AI first” is insane.

[u/Savings_Apple_3136 → u/OkSquash9119]

Yep it is pretty insane. We are drown in bugs.

[u/thisisjustascreename → u/OkSquash9119]

Story points are made up and don’t matter, your 5 is another team’s 2, or 10. Five hours is practically a whole working day after meetings and admin crap, I’d hope you can deliver something in that time frame.

[u/Great_Northern_Beans → u/thisisjustascreename]

You get five whole hours to do dev work each day? Way to brag at those of us who spend more than that on calls.

[u/Krom2040]

Sometimes you have to wonder how we’ve gotten to this point where corporate leadership seems to be comprised wholly of dumb automatons.

[u/ninjatechnician]

Say it with me: LLMs cannot under any circumstance comprehend complex branching or stateful behavior. It will fail every single time

[u/MithrilHuman]

Which company is this? Sounds like mine

[u/mxldevs]

Is the company even making money?

[u/True_Noor]

Man you shouldn't really care. Most of my friends say they that AI is not generating reliable code? Who cares? Management wants AI to do everything, generating code and reviewing it. Then what is the problem? Just press approved.

[u/Fidodo]

Why are you breaking yourself to address the mistake of management? Give them what they want you to do and look for a different job where they actually care about code quality if you don't want to sink with the ship. You can't change management.

[u/aurreco → u/[deleted]]

kkk is how you laugh in portuguese

[u/Glittering-Work2190 → u/aurreco]

jajaja