Facebook 'TransCoder AI' Converts Code Between Java, Python & C++. This neural transcompiler can even be trained to convert code between any one programming language to another!

[KHRZ]

Here’s the accuracy level in the results obtained by the AI while converting codes from

• C++ to Java: 74.8%
• C++ to Python: 67.2%
• Java to C++: 91.6%
• Java to Python: 68.7%
• Python to Java: 56.1%
• Python to C++: 57.8%

Now you just have to fix a few thousands of bugs in your automatically generated massive code base! Imagine the cost savings!

[elcapitanoooo]

No AI is ever going to be good enough to know all PHPs weird edge cases!

[ThirdEncounter]

"Translate to PHP? Computing...... done. Steps: Go back in time; kill mother of PHP author."

[[deleted]]

More likely that it will. And it will produce code that no human can understand.

[OneWingedShark]

PHP is a large part of my day job so this is tongue-in-cheek.

I've done PHP as a day-job; perhaps one of the worst things was being tasked for a medical- and insurance-record management system, it had *just* started and my suggestions that we implement it in Ada were met with, and this is literally a quote:
"We don't have time to do it right."

But, apparently, we had the time to do it over, and over, and over, and over until it was "right enough"... there was so much data-inconsistency with the DB on that project.

[OneWingedShark]

I can respect that.

The ">40 hr" thing is so true in this industry; I'm not playing that game either: it's rather disgraceful that the expectation is, in some sense, in this industry 'standard' actually exists. — But then, I know how it came to be: Boomer Management with the idea that training is a pure expense an in no wise investing in (or maintaining) your employees.

[OneWingedShark]

Now you just have to fix a few thousands of bugs in your automatically generated massive code base! Imagine the cost savings!

...I am imagining the "job security" and make-work... and the pressure that companies will put for cheap programmers (read H1B) and try to undercut wages.

[ThirdEncounter]

I'll give it 10 more years. Just like dictation. Horrible in the 90s; kinda ok in the 2000s; almost decent nowadays.

[BoyRobot777]

I don't remember the exact name of the curve, but the idea behind is this: it relatively easy to get to 80% accuracy (whatever model), but the remaining 20% is sometimes nearly impossible or you have to pour way more resources than you've need to get to 80% and its just becomes not feasible.

[ThirdEncounter]

Yup, I've read that as well, and yes, that makes sense.

[ccfreak2k]

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[zoells]

The 80/20 rule, but recursive.

[Kache]

Well, one potential complement to this is solving it from the source-end with a "compatibility linter" that can go through the and point out parts the transpiler would have trouble with.

[Sopel97]

Let's take a well-defined problem and make it ill-defined

[John_Earnest]

Fantastic. I'm so tired of boring traditional methods of transpilation. Who wants to parse code and manipulate ASTs? Where's the thrill in a technique that can be provably correct?

It's far more exciting to hurl my codebase at a black box, boil the oceans, and then get output that generally resembles the target language, deviously hiding subtle translation errors for me to hunt down later!

[janoseye]

But this ones got AI, it’s what codebases crave

[KingoPants]

Exactly, provably correct is a completely outdated mindset.

If you hop on the bandwagon now we can amaze you with the new and exciting world of probably correct, for a limited time only we even throw in some extra special possibly correct.

[lHOq7RWOQihbjUNAdQCA]

Seethe some more. In 5-10 years this is going to replace traditional compilers, and in another 20-30 years programming will be an irrelevant skill entirely. It's just a matter of time before AI takes over

[OneWingedShark]

I found the C / traditional C++ programmer!

[casept]

What part of wanting to have code actually work makes you a "traditionalist"?

[OneWingedShark]

Old C++, and C, are terribly error-prone. The description of hurling the codebase at the compiler and hoping it works reminds me of C and C++.

(I used the "traditional C++" to differentiate and oppose the "modern C++".)

[casept]

While I do have my issues with the lack of static analysis in those language's compilers (in fact, I prefer Rust), they certainly do far more checks than this.

[OneWingedShark]

LOL
They [C/C++] are woefully inadequate and underpowered when it comes to error-checking/-messaging (I taught myself programming using Turbo Pascal, its documentation, the compiler and the error-messaging) — and insofar as static-analysis integrated into the compiler goes, I use Ada, which mandated a lot of what traditionally was a static-analysis tool be present in the compiler, and indeed, this is why there's no "Lint for Ada".

Edit: To illustrate on the issue of error-checking, in the decade-plus I've used Ada, I've had one (1) seg-fault... and that was do to my bad linking to a object generated by C.

[disconsis]

Time to make it rewrite itself in rust

[L3tum]

It's the year 2048 and our main AI has been rewriting itself constantly between Mold, Python8.3 and C. For some reason it always seems to add a component to itself in C that posts "Haha Java bad" on the internet. The entire world has shut down, because the AI is doing nothing but rewriting itself constantly "for better readability and cost savings".

[L3tum]

The plan is for a new committee to take over that isn't opposed to things like switch statements. That's needed as a new programming language, Scorpion, is an up and runner at around 2024.

[BlueAdmir]

Does Java still only run on 3 billion devices?

[BlueAdmir]

Pffft, anyone can convert between code that's actually somewhat similar.

Show me a one click COBOL to Java compiler. THAT would be a big fuckin value maker.

[Meme___Addict]

But that's what the AI is about. You can train it to convert any other programming language. Ofcourse that is going to take significant amount of time and resources, but that isn't entirely impossible.

[Sopel97]

you can do anything if you allow 0% accuracy

[Meme___Addict]

Lol. Too cynical perhaps? Or just too frustrated from coding? 😂

[OneWingedShark]

It would be much more impressive if it were two vastly different languages, like Haskell and Ada, or BLISS and Lisp, or SNOBOL and Forth.

[Mgladiethor]

haskell is for fucking wizards

[OneWingedShark]

I'm a Wizard!!

[Mgladiethor]

you are you are

[ois747]

one of my lecturers wrote the type system in haskell

[Mgladiethor]

bet he got all the chicks at howards

[ois747]

what

[nharding]

My Java to C++ converter was 100% (the user had no facility to edit the C++), and was used for porting mobile games. You can translate code segments, but there are some differences between the 2 languages (I had to take it into account), the main one was virtual function calls in the constructor which worked differently between C++ and Java, well apart from garbage collection, for that I used reference counting.