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My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now (GLM-4.5 Air)

(simonwillison.net)
577 points simonw | 3 comments | 29 Jul 25 13:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.612s | source
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AlexeyBrin ◴[29 Jul 25 14:02 UTC] No.44723521[source]▶
Most likely its training data included countless Space Invaders in various programming languages.
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gblargg ◴[29 Jul 25 15:34 UTC] No.44724690[source]▶
The real test is if you can have it tweak things. Have the ship shoot down. Have the space invaders come from the left and right. Add two player simultaneous mode with two ships.
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1. wizzwizz4 ◴[29 Jul 25 20:28 UTC] No.44727900[source]▶
It can usually tweak things, if given specific instruction, but it doesn't know when to refactor (and can't reliably preserve functionality when it does), so the program gets further and further away from something sensible until it can't make edits any more.
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2. simonw ◴[29 Jul 25 20:30 UTC] No.44727913[source]▶
For serious projects you can address that by writing (or having it write) unit tests along the way, that way it can run in a loop and avoid breaking existing functionality when it adds new changes.
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3. greesil ◴[29 Jul 25 21:08 UTC] No.44728283[source]▶
Okay ask it to write unit tests for space invaders next time :)