Thread

Writing Rust code that's fast by asking agents to make the code faster

114 points · 63 comments · mooreds

metalspot · 1790094725 · focus · HN ↗
I have done a fair amount of low level performance optimization with Opus 5 and its reasoning is still very poor. Like why is CRC so slow and going through loops until I ask it if is using hardware instructions and it tells me it is using its own hand coded implementation poor. Reasoning about l1/l2/l3 cache hit ratios and their implications basically throwing darts at the wall, in the wrong room. If you give it a benchmark feedback loop then it might get there eventually but still massive alpha for low level systems engineers who instinctively know how this stuff works and can now automate 99% of the grind.
1. RomanKornev · 1790199093 · focus · HN ↗
  A new meta is emerging of having high taste + infinite compute with little domain expertise. One recent example is Jarred Sumner taking a crack at the Riemann Hypothesis
  > Throughout this process, Jarred's input was mostly limited to sending Claude messages of encouragement (mostly variants of “keep going” or “believe in yourself”).
  How much experience can you replace with infinite compute remains to be seen I guess.
  <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49247070">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49247070

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