Igor Zhirkov

280 posts

Igor Zhirkov

Igor Zhirkov

@rub_duck_type

Programmer, researcher, writer. Author of 'Low-Level Programming: C, assembly and program execution' Ex-compiler team, @the_matter_labs

Warsaw/Nantes Katılım Mayıs 2010
364 Takip Edilen271 Takipçiler
Igor Zhirkov
Igor Zhirkov@rub_duck_type·
@preshing Giambattista Vico is the philosopher of makers. "The truth is the made" -- nature is explorable (experiments), not knowable; to know a man made thing is to understand its history of design decisions. LLM has no inherent intentional decision making that a human can reconstruct.
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Jeff Preshing
Jeff Preshing@preshing·
One could argue that as models grow stronger, narrowing the scope of a task will matter less and less, because agents will eventually figure out all the details. Sure, I can see that trend continuing, and I welcome it, but I don't think Murphy's Law is about to disappear either.
Jeff Preshing@preshing

From now on, nobody should be allowed to say anything about AI unless they've watched @badlogicgames's talk: youtube.com/watch?v=RjfbvD… This slide in particular is gold. There are good ways to use coding agents and there are bad ways. These are the good ways! Other people on Twitter are gradually reaching the same conclusions, so save yourself some time and just watch Mario's talk. (I don't think this list will fundamentally change with future models, either — even if the benchmarks reach 100%. Disagree? Tell me why.)

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Jeff Preshing
Jeff Preshing@preshing·
From now on, nobody should be allowed to say anything about AI unless they've watched @badlogicgames's talk: youtube.com/watch?v=RjfbvD… This slide in particular is gold. There are good ways to use coding agents and there are bad ways. These are the good ways! Other people on Twitter are gradually reaching the same conclusions, so save yourself some time and just watch Mario's talk. (I don't think this list will fundamentally change with future models, either — even if the benchmarks reach 100%. Disagree? Tell me why.)
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Igor Zhirkov
Igor Zhirkov@rub_duck_type·
@ylecun @Ph_Aghion @erikbryn The industry is in a weird spot, so is IT education. Some people higher up in the hierarchy are overly skeptical and others downright delusional. I feel sorry for junior devs who are now trying to educate themselves, fight temptations and misconceptions, and get their first job.
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Yann LeCun
Yann LeCun@ylecun·
Dario is wrong. He knows absolutely nothing about the effects of technological revolutions on the labor market. Don't listen to him, Sam, Yoshua, Geoff, or me on this topic. Listen to economists who have spent their career studying this, like @Ph_Aghion , @erikbryn , @DAcemogluMIT , @amcafee , @davidautor
TFTC@TFTC21

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei: “50% of all tech jobs, entry-level lawyers, consultants, and finance professionals will be completely wiped out within 1–5 years.”

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Igor Zhirkov
Igor Zhirkov@rub_duck_type·
@dari0x @jamonholmgren Hope you'll find balance for your own mental comfort. Your boy will also mimic you to learn behavior patterns enabling him to live a happy life. I used to shame myself for every act of self care, and I needed to fix it as we were expecting a kid.
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Dario
Dario@dari0x·
Well our boy is 1.5 years old, can't walk yet, but is able to climb up everywhere and it gets dangerous very quickly. The other thing are expectations. In society it's almost expected that as a dad you're there 24/7. 20 years ago that was just for the mom. My partner doesn't expect that from me, but somehow I expect it from myself. Each time I do soemthing for myself, I feel bad for not spending time with my son.
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Jamon
Jamon@jamonholmgren·
I genuinely do not get why kids take up 100% of their parents’ time these days. My dad and mom raised us 9 kids and didn’t spend every waking moment with us. I raised 4 of my own and didn’t spend every waking moment with them. And yet every reply is telling this burned out dad that he is doing the right thing, or even to go harder. Super weird to me.
PPE@planert41

Dads with young kids Is it normal to just feel tired and burnt out all the time? It’s like you don’t even really get the weekend to recover because it’s all just kid stuff the moment you wake up Arguably the only personal time you have is when they nap (and you’re already dead tired by that time) or the hour after they go to bed but before you pass out Just trying to figure out if I’m doing something wrong

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Igor Zhirkov
Igor Zhirkov@rub_duck_type·
@jamonholmgren Happy parents are necessary to bring up a happy kid, so I personally balance engagement with the kid and taking care of myself and wife. But every kid and family are different. We have a calm one and she likes playing by herself, but we also have almost no help from families.
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Igor Zhirkov
Igor Zhirkov@rub_duck_type·
@ratlpolicy There is no such thing as a page of text in this scenario. 100 pages of generic detectives, of Russel, of Spinoza, of Heidegger, of Levinas, Deleuze, Bible? And how prepared are you and how much are you engaging? People spend whole seminars discussing a single page of Hegel.
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Igor Zhirkov
Igor Zhirkov@rub_duck_type·
@smokinscientist Also reading 20 pages of Heidegger for a class is different to reading a 300 pages sci-fi novel, on many levels. I don't mean novels are stupid, just that they are engaging with readers in different ways, with different gratification and return-of-effort patterns.
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Igor Zhirkov
Igor Zhirkov@rub_duck_type·
@ProfBZZZ A bit surprising. I attend philosophy classes in University of Warsaw as a free listener and most require an average of 10-30 pages reading weekly per class, plus textbooks on top of that. Gen Z students seem to struggle with discipline/scheduling but not with reading itself.
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Brandon Zicha
Brandon Zicha@ProfBZZZ·
A student today at my elite university admitted to me today that she took a class so she could work on reading for more than 20 minutes at a time. She can't read. She mainly skims and summarizes, she says and still gets A's. This student is, by professional standards, illiterate. Gonna have high GPA when she graduates. This conversation was had after 6 of 22 students dropped my course because the maximum reading per week in one week was over 100 pages. What people aren't grasping is that this is literally *dangerous*. These people are going to be come doctors, engineers, etc. They are - by any metric - vastly less capable than prior generations. These effects are cumulative over a lifetime. This grade inflation is part of the problem, but not even close to the entirety. And the problem obviously starts in K-12. Students don't know history because, you can't actually become historically literate on the advice of 'never assign more than 30 pages a week'. You can't develop any of the skills that came with literacy. This is, quite honestly, a civilizational catastrophe.
Steve McGuire@sfmcguire79

79% of grades at Yale are A-range. Graduating summa cum laude requires a record high GPA OF 3.98.

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Igor Zhirkov
Igor Zhirkov@rub_duck_type·
@anthonykrose @zksync @gluk64 Thank you for being an inspiration @arose, I know whatever you chose to touch next will turn golden. Working with you was one of the best parts of my ML experience (and several of our former colleagues voiced the same opinion).
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Anthony Rose
Anthony Rose@anthonykrose·
Some personal news: after 4 years at @zksync, I’ve decided to move on. I'm immensely proud of the technology we built, bullish on the incredible team, and grateful for the journey. I'm as convinced as ever by the mission and will be cheering @gluk64 and the team on from the sidelines.
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Igor Zhirkov
Igor Zhirkov@rub_duck_type·
Why Solidity compilation is much harder than it looks: gas is part of program behavior, “correctness” is underspecified and one-size-fits-all, and every extra compiler or target makes the problem worse. rubber-duck-typing.com/posts/2026-03-…
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Igor Zhirkov
Igor Zhirkov@rub_duck_type·
@paulg Followed up the Leuchtturm hype and got one of their A4 sized notebooks. Sadly with a fountain pen it ghosts too much so I went back to using sketchbooks for note taking. Perhaps they have models with higher gsm? Something like Art Talens seems cheaper with better paper.
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Paul Graham
Paul Graham@paulg·
Brands I love: Lego, Leuchtturm, Oxford University Press, Pentel, Schöffel, Aqualung, Paradores, Staedtler, Birkenstock, Braun, Knoll, Patagonia, Herman Miller, Iittala, L.A. Burdick, Artemide, Aman, Thames & Hudson, Yeti, Rimowa, L.L.Bean, Timbuk2, Eschenbach, Ridge, Maui Jim.
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Igor Zhirkov
Igor Zhirkov@rub_duck_type·
@GergelyOrosz Great article and over my last years of teaching programming I made sure my students knew about it so that they understand the market better. However, taxes are hitting the highest grossing the hardest too. Kills motivation for some.
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Gergely Orosz
Gergely Orosz@GergelyOrosz·
I’ve met so many software engineers in Europe who assumed the same (“no way anyone in EU can make more than €100K/yr) Then read my article on the Trimodal nature of dev salaries, realized which companies to apply to, and broke in there. This article: blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engin…
Arvid Kahl@arvidkahl

The worst part is that this kind of salary is effectively unreachable for 99% of European software engineers. If they're lucky, they get to negotiate up to €80k at the end of their career. Unlikely. They're extremely competent. Capable. Impactful. But they end up making €40k.

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Chris Lattner
Chris Lattner@clattner_llvm·
The Claude C Compiler is the first AI-generated compiler that builds complex C code, built by @AnthropicAI. Reactions ranged from dismissal as "AI nonsense" to "SW is over": both takes miss the point. As a compiler🐉 expert and experienced SW leader, I see a lot to learn: 👇
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Jeff Preshing
Jeff Preshing@preshing·
I'm convinced that if you're building a large piece of commercial software, the only good way to use AI coding agents is as a power tool, without forsaking your ability to understand the code. On the other hand, if you're building disposable software — for personal use, for a demo, or just experimenting — then abandoning understanding of the code is totally fine. If the project is simple, the AI-generated code will be easy to understand anyway. I see many takes claiming the opposite. People are saying that soon, understanding the code won't even matter. The logic goes: AI is improving all the time, therefore, it will eventually just do everything without human intervention. Some people are already trying to live in this imagined future: Running Ralph loops, getting agents to supervise other agents, cranking out hundreds of commits per day. More power to them, but I don't plan to work that way. Of course AI will keep improving. In the best case, those improvements will lead us towards greater simplicity. They'll help untangle spaghetti code, suggest better ways to organize the project, generate clear, up-to-date documentation. Projects will become easier to understand and onboarding will become easier for both humans and AI alike. This is the only trend that makes sense to me. I can imagine that in 20 years or so, software engineering will no longer be a glamour job. Development tools will be more intuitive. The opportunities to get rich overnight will fade. We'll still need programmers and system maintainers, but not as many. But I think it will take time.
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Igor Zhirkov
Igor Zhirkov@rub_duck_type·
@JoeBloxsome @johncrickett You can use AI as an imprecise calculator too, but it is not the right tool for the job. Compilers carefully navigate a "chaotic" space of target programs where any tiny error in translation escalates to a binary that acts VERY differently from what's intended.
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Joe Bloxsome
Joe Bloxsome@JoeBloxsome·
What’s so controversial about the suggestion that an AI might write binary directly though? All programming languages ultimately compile down to binary. Humans can’t reliably interpret and write binary at any sort of scale, so we use programming languages and compilers as an interface. Binary will in most cases be more compressed than code in programming languages - so it makes sense that the most efficient way for an AI to write code is by writing binary directly. Sure we need to solve some reliability issues and things like hallucinations first. But once you take humans out of the loop it’s 100% true that direct to binary is the way it will go. You might not agree with Elon Musk’s timeline but it will definitely happen eventually.
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John Crickett
John Crickett@johncrickett·
Tell me you don't understand building software without telling me you don't understand building software: “by the end of this year you don't even bother doing coding. The AI will just create the binary directly. And the AI can create a much more efficient binary than can be done by any compiler.” Elon Musk
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Igor Zhirkov
Igor Zhirkov@rub_duck_type·
@cryptoverse420 @grok @MasihEther @stats_feed Most schools in Russia are shit for ALL subjects. I went to one of the best schools in Petersburg (2nd largest city), 5 good teachers over 10 years. There are maybe 10 schools good for STEM in the country, there kids are screened and trained for competitions in small groups.
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cryptoverse420💎
cryptoverse420💎@cryptoverse420·
@grok @MasihEther @stats_feed You don't have to attend a specialized school in Russia to study math and physics. Education is good in every public school there; its quality doesn't depend on zip code like it does in the US.
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World of Statistics
World of Statistics@stats_feed·
Top 5 European countries by gold medals in International Science Olympiads 🥇 Mathematics
🇷🇺 Russia — 106
🇭🇺 Hungary — 90
🇷🇴 Romania — 88
🇬🇧 United Kingdom — 59
🇧🇬 Bulgaria — 57 Physics
🇷🇺 Russia — 99
🇷🇴 Romania — 62
🇭🇺 Hungary — 45
🇩🇪 Germany — 31
🇵🇱 Poland — 24 Informatics
🇷🇺 Russia — 68
🇵🇱 Poland — 45
🇷🇴 Romania — 38
🇧🇬 Bulgaria — 29
🇫🇷 France — 26 Chemistry
🇷🇺 Russia — 16
🇷🇴 Romania — 13
🇨🇿 Czechia — 9
🇬🇧 United Kingdom — 9
🇧🇬 Bulgaria — 8 Biology
🇷🇺 Russia — 22
🇩🇪 Germany — 9
🇭🇺 Hungary — 8
🇧🇬 Bulgaria — 6
🇬🇧 United Kingdom — 5 Artificial Intelligence
🇷🇺 Russia — 6
🇵🇱 Poland — 4
🇷🇴 Romania — 2
🇸🇪 Sweden — 1
🇭🇺 Hungary — 1
🇧🇬 Bulgaria — 1
🇸🇮 Slovenia — 1 Eastern Europe dominates academic Olympiads — quietly, consistently, for decades. @stats_feed
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Enrico Borba
Enrico Borba@enricozb·
@VictorTaelin The bugs will move from the code to the spec, which will hopefully be much smaller.
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Taelin
Taelin@VictorTaelin·
perhaps an inconvenient truth that I have to face is that when you manually implement a repository, your time isn't spent just to create the code, but the same time also doubles as if you were studying the code. it is a bonus: when you make something, you create the best possible mental mode of that thing, so you learn it fully vibe coding is cool and it is absolutely faster than coding manually, and anyone telling you otherwise is in denial. I strongly believe that. yet, if you just vibe code all day, you will not understand the code at all, you won't know the specific ways on which each thing was done, and, if things break and the AI can't fix it, you'll have an immense time debt to learn everything and fix the issue so, yes, absolutely, if we really want to move to a world where we can vibe code and be in peace with the fact we do not read the code, we *need* to have a way to ensure the code is correct. that is only logical. we will still code, but we will do so in specs, in precise types. the code will derive from that. I'm every day more confident that this makes a lot of sense and I should probably take that seriously and focus more efforts on completing Bend2 asap and making my point clearer yes it is 2am, sorry, I *was* trying to sleep back to bed
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Mini mal
Mini mal@gatelevelanon·
Unlike what the hype says, verification is an important piece of software engineering. If you code faster than the ability to verify it, you build crap. This is the problem with vibe coders. The alternate approach is to create code slowly, always incrementally in the right direction, and verify it at every step. Slow and directional steps are better than fast scattered steps all over the place
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Igor Zhirkov
Igor Zhirkov@rub_duck_type·
@chrisman I agree you should start with talking, but you will quickly hit a wall of a tiny working memory, and kids are totally capable of developing more complex ideas which require using paper as an extension of your mind.
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Chrisman
Chrisman@chrisman·
Making kids write their ideas is just an unfortunate side effect of large classrooms. If you homeschool, you can just talk with your kids. Far more effective. Neither Socrates nor Jesus felt compelled to write persuasive essays. Probably 9 year olds don’t need to either.
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Igor Zhirkov
Igor Zhirkov@rub_duck_type·
@chrisman In Phaedrus Socrates rants about how writing is inferior to a conversation, as a part of a _written_ dialogue by Plato :) Writing may also engage you in a process quite similar to a dialogue, Plato uses it himself for example in Phaedo: rubber-duck-typing.com/posts/2025-12-…
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