Well, there's my super-secret future-of-software-development-and-data-autonomy project, but we're not to talk about that, so shhh! (basically my next startup idea, once I've finished inventing it).

Then, there's language-ext [1], which is my large open-source functional-programming framework for C#. And although this isn't beyond the realms of an LLM: they know FP and they know C# and even my library has been around for more than a decade, so it'll be in the training data, when it comes to bending C# to my whims or to trying to eek out exceptional performance, they're all at sea.

A good example would be what I am working on at the moment, which I have in a standalone prototyping repo [2]. Basically I have introduced functional traits to C#, like `Functor<F>`, `Applicative<F>`, `Monad<M>`, etc. This brings more rigour to things like LINQ comprehensions and allows for the building of truly generic trait-based behaviours. Something that just doesn't really exist in C#.

In language-ext today I have `Foldable<F>`, which is a little bit like `IEnumerable`, but pure. I want to be able to provide a super efficient set of default implementations for any `Foldable` (or enumerable/iterable). For this I need an efficient lazy-stream or co-routine system. The one built-in to C# (`IEnumerable` and `IEnumerator`) is impure (it mutates as it enumerates), so I am trying to build an efficient iterator/enumerator that:

* Takes around 0.25 nanoseconds per-iteration-step for its housekeeping (this speed is then on a par with the mutable IEnumerators that are a core part of C#).

* Doesn't allocate any memory

* Is immutable

* Is lazy

* Can be stopped at any point and the iterator reference be passed around (because it's immutable)

* Can be composed with standard functional operators (functor map, applicative apply, monad bind, etc.) without performance degradation and without a large memory-allocation cost.

I've been building several prototypes to try different ways of bending C# to my whims. I've managed all but the last item on that list.

Not allocating memory means using value-types (stack allocated types), but that also means the entire state of the co-routine needs to be stored in the value-type as each value is yielded (because control needs to be given back to whatever code is processing the values). To solve it, I'm pretty much building my own runtime, stack-machine, and memory manager on top of the .NET CLR so that I don't have to submit to its rules. I'm trying to apply as many of my old-skool low-level engineering chops as I can (without making it brittle); but to do the last item on that list needs more space in a value-type than would be reasonable (to avoid copying costs), so I'm looking at other pooling strategies and into building lots of bespoke to-the-metal memory managers.

After all of that, it may be a fools errand, and not doable. The LLM wouldn't understand, and that's for just one feature! Also, it must be stated, I just love doing this shit, it's brain fuel. The idea of having this conversation endlessly with an LLM as it continuously gets it wrong is nightmare fuel.

I'm not anti-AI, I love the fact that people who can't, now can. But, at this point in my journey with code, I think quicker and can produce quicker than an LLM. I think it's akin to a virtuoso piano player. If the piano player had to describe what they wanted to an LLM, the magic would go, the enjoyment would go, and potentially the quality would go. It would it also take much longer than if they had just played.

That's how I feel with code. An LLM can maybe churn out more code than me, but I can build more value and I can invent. And when in my flow state, nothing can stop me.

I will certainly keep checking in though, I'm sure there'll be a point where I feel like it augments me rather than hinders. It's just not there for me yet.

Too much information? :D

[1] https://github.com/louthy/language-ext

[2] https://github.com/louthy/iterator-prototype (this is messy prototype code, don't hate me).

Small programming tricks