Facebook’s TransCoder AI Translates Between Programming Languages

venturebeat.com

9 points·KhoomeiK··3 comments

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"When translating from C++ to Java, 74.8% of TransCoder’s generations returned the expected outputs.

When translating from C++ to Python, 67.2% of TransCoder’s generations returned the expected outputs.

When translating from Java to C++, 91.6% of TransCoder’s generations returned the expected outputs.

When translating from Python to Java, 56.1% of TransCoder’s generations returned the expected outputs.

When translating from Python to C++, 57.8% of TransCoder’s generations returned the expected outputs.

When translating from Java to Python, 68.7% of TransCoder’s generations returned the expected outputs."

Probably beats standard models but at first glance still seems far from useful for any sizable project.

This seems pointless except as a excuse to use AI.

Isn’t this what compilers are for (converting one language to another)

I mean, unless it's 100% it's not very useful. Maybe if it does the trancode and can then tell you where in the code to look for problems. Otherwise, you would have to spend a lot of time looking at the code to figure out what went wrong. And at that point, you might as well do the transcode yourself.

Depending on how badly it does, it might be useful as a starting point though.

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