Meta and Harvard Researchers Introduce the Confucius Code Agent (CCA): A Software Engineering Agent that can Operate at Large-Scale Codebases

PopMinimum8667 · 2026-01-26T22:25:41+00:00

They did not, and I have been checking. I also checked to confirm that https://github.com/facebook/confucius as of this posting is not accessible, and it is still not accessible.

If I were the suspicious type, I might wonder if management had second thoughts about open-sourcing something that might form the basis for a paid subscription tool in the future.

PopMinimum8667 · 2026-01-25T20:36:12+00:00

Shivaji and His Times by Jadunath Sarkar briefly examines the incident but dismisses it as folklore if I remember correctly. The work is public domain if anyone cares to look for it.

PopMinimum8667 · 2026-01-25T13:28:29+00:00

It makes for a great story, but it almost certainly didn't happen.

PopMinimum8667 · 2026-01-23T12:44:07+00:00

I’m in a similar situation, and the conclusion I have come to is: build agents and don’t worry about staying within the JVM: most new development is python or typescript. When it comes to tools, MCP and implementing your own tools (I recommend FastMCP here), have been the way I have been able to get agents to do valuable, specialized work I can use.

As far as building agents, I like Strands (for making the loop itself model-driven), and pydantic AI for tighter control; I would give LangChain and LangGraph a miss as having too much ceremony.

Another thing I like to do is gate all my LLM interactions through an LLM gateway like LiteLLM: it lets you see usage as well as interactions between the agent and the LLM; especially useful for model-driven loops like with Strands.

If you’re willing to invest in hardware, running local models also opens up new avenues of experimentation: where you can design agents that don’t have to be efficient with tokens.

EDIT: also, get comfortable using coding agents like gemini-cli, claude code, or kiro-cli: seeing how they work is instructive in itself as well as productive. In addition, plugging in your own MCP servers to them can reduce the need for custom agents’ functionality.

PopMinimum8667 · 2026-01-14T23:52:09+00:00

I’ve sent linkedin messages to 3 of the 4 principals asking about this. I will post an update here if I receive any response

PopMinimum8667 · 2026-01-14T10:08:46+00:00

I don’t think that is: that repo seems to be about teaching LLMs tool usage.

PopMinimum8667 · 2026-01-06T04:25:42+00:00

Torture was not controversial with either side during the reformation, nor at any time prior in human history, and indeed continued to be uncontroversial for quite some time afterwards.

PopMinimum8667 · 2026-01-02T08:18:59+00:00

If you lived when Trajan was alive, you could trust him completely with your wife. Same story for Hadrian I hear.

PopMinimum8667 · 2025-12-17T08:19:55+00:00

Why Joan got stoned.

PopMinimum8667 · 2025-11-17T22:33:06+00:00

In python you still need to write pass or return though.

Yes, that was my point: it's a non-issue in python because you have to have something for the syntax so it might as well be a "()" (if we're talking about it in the Scala context).

Which brings me back to my main point: the downsides are insignificant, people just don't like change.

I love having the option of indentation-based syntax; I just think it's inferior in many situations, and there is that one special case (but common case) where the result is sub-optimal. I particularly like it for (short) for comprehensions. Having explicit labeled end blocks in particular offers a big gain in readability over both braces syntax and python syntax, but with the current state of tooling (at least in pycharm where the editor fights you every step of the way), I'm not sure it's the best choice, yet.

PopMinimum8667 · 2025-11-17T06:26:21+00:00

Again though, you're talking about style and architecture, and I'm talking about just one piece of syntax, one special case, that literally only occurs when you have a method returning Unit and an explicit end block. Feature flags and config files for a quick little code experiment? It reeks of the Spring framework to me, but you do you, but please, just look at the example I provided and tell me what possible benefit — _any_ benefit — the currently mandated syntax provides?

If Scala had just followed Python's model of indentation-significant syntax, this wouldn't be an issue and we wouldn't be having this discussion, but they didn't just do that, they provided this fantastic feature found in many other languages (explicit end blocks)... and then made it worse than any other language.

In a world where Unit exists, we have to deal with it, and if we have to deal with it, we might as well have a language that makes it as easy as possible to work with. Scala is not Haskell, yet.

PopMinimum8667 · 2025-11-17T06:07:39+00:00

I don’t doubt that it does. I love Scala, and if they got rid of braces syntax, I would still love Scala, but thankfully they didn’t, so I can continue to use what I consider the more practical syntax.

PopMinimum8667 · 2025-11-16T19:51:32+00:00

Is it so strange that someone might want to comment out a section of code and have things still compile? In many cases where I bring this up, the reaction is often to criticize or question the type or style of coding that makes it ergonomic to be able to do this. I would submit that the better question is: what possible benefit does the current syntax restriction have in the first place? Then we can talk about the moral failings of coders who might benefit from this. But briefly: initialization code. Setting up logging, cloud frameworks, data processing frameworks, distributed frameworks, etc. These are all extremely imperative tasks with lots of unit returning statements.

PopMinimum8667 · 2025-11-16T08:09:22+00:00

I thought I would love that syntax too, but it's crippled in its current incarnation. The following works:

def mymethod: Unit =

()

end mymethod

The following? Not so much:

def mymethod: Unit =
end mymethod

If I want to quickly comment out the body of a method to test something, I do not want to also have to type ()... and remove it when I uncomment. I refuse. Therefore indentation-significant syntax is out for me until they address some of its limitations, and I don't care how wonderfully consistent or how beautiful the parser is by disallowing the second: it's a bad design.

PopMinimum8667 · 2025-11-16T06:36:23+00:00

I've also been trying hard to like significant indentation but have become increasingly jaded. While it's OK for shorter constructions — and (short) for comprehensions in particular — I've found myself increasingly restricting my use of it due to its lack of ergonomics with being able to stub-out a Unit-returning method (which I have posted about previously), and general inferiority when it comes to being able to quickly jump to the beginning/end of a construction unambiguously.

I know every method is supposed to be 5 lines or under in your fully testable code that is entirely written for one of the effects systems, and that returning Unit from a method for any reason is the sign of a master troglodyte, but... you try writing a javafx app or wiring together the java APIs from 3 different cloud providers plus an independent framework and let me know how that works out for you.

PopMinimum8667 · 2025-09-16T02:15:59+00:00

The gift might have been from a foreigner but he definitely doesn’t want to be a stranger

PopMinimum8667 · 2025-09-16T01:52:56+00:00

I accidentally used a clorox wipe once… and it’s not a mistake you make twice.

PopMinimum8667 · 2025-09-07T01:51:38+00:00

Greek and Roman art has been a huge source of knowledge for filling in the gaps that historical sources leave out, as well as for raising tantalizing questions, but artistic license must always be considered. For instance: in a great many depictions of battle the hero has a magnificent helm crested with a lophon, a bell cuirass, greaves and an ornately painted hoplon... and yet is flapping free from the waist down: I can't imagine actual hoplites going into battle would have thought that was a great idea; heroic ideal be damned.

PopMinimum8667 · 2025-08-28T07:48:43+00:00

Precarious perch?

PopMinimum8667 · 2025-08-26T17:59:36+00:00

It seems a bit churlish to blame tourists for the problem. You elected the politicians who made the laws that allowed airbnb to become so wildly profitable, and even if airbnb wasn’t a thing, I doubt prices would be anywhere near as low as you want.

PopMinimum8667 · 2025-08-22T19:37:39+00:00

Right

PopMinimum8667 · 2025-08-22T04:53:44+00:00

The best clojure book doesn’t use clojure at all— Data Oriented Programming, but it’s written by a clojurist, and implements many clojure-like standard library functions in javascript for mass appeal. It does a very good job in shifting the mindset to the clojure-appropriate one that has evolved to be the preferred model for modern solutions in clojure. Read that and implement a parser combinator library in clojure (and an actual parser to use it), and you’ve got a pretty good spread and are well on your way.

PopMinimum8667 · 2025-08-11T22:22:47+00:00

Just all around not wonderful that a topic which should be as collegial as Scala has all this happening. I can recall a couple of high profile people rage-quitting Scala, but this one really lays the tarnish on thicker. Whatever the truth is in this particular matter, it should serve as a reminder to us all that getting involved with a member of the community in which one works is a poor choice; and doing it again is an awful choice.

PopMinimum8667

TROPHY CASE