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I've already been improving Lobster's speed a lot in recent times: https://github.com/aardappel/lobster/blob/master/tests/compa...

Self-hosting would be cool too, but for both Lobster and Goose I've tried to keep it simple for people to build the language in any environment, which is why its still all in C++.

I don't use any "skills". From what I can see, the #1 way an AI produces "good code" is to simply work in the context of existing good code. I don't need to hold it by a style guide, it seems to infer that from context just fine. At least Fable does, other models less so.

I suppose something like a skill would help those starting with the language. If nothing else, a well written skill can be read by a human - or you could load the skill and generate a program you are familiar with.
How do you ensure that bootstrapping a new project has good code?
As I mention at the end of https://github.com/aardappel/goose/blob/master/README.md I essentially had it use a previous compiler of mine (Lobster) as a template.

Even if you don't have such an example, pick a project that you think has "good code" (even if it is not your own), point the LLM at it, tell it to have a deep read of the code, and come up with a very in-depth coding guideline in a .md file with code patterns etc. Then put that .md in your new project and tell it to follow it.

> From what I can see, the #1 way an AI produces "good code" is to simply work in the context of existing good code.

"Just Git Gud First" - Wouter van Oortmerssen

That's unnecessarily dismissive. I find the statement quite enlightening and I wish other engineers would realize the wisdom here.

LLMs are pattern matching machines. Your code is the base template that will determine all patterns moving forward. No amount of context engineering or prompting can save your code from itself.

Pragmatically, it suggests we need a much greater investment in code quality, and much less hand-wringing over AI tooling.

Apologies, I wasn't trying to be dismissive, it was meant to be a joke that the sentence read like an (earned) humblebrag.

For context: I'm very active on the Goose discord (and have been following WvO's languages since Lobster was announced on Google Groups eons ago). I goof around there too, and forgot for a moment that outside of that chat it wouldn't be obvious that I'm being tongue-in-cheek.