Modular: The Claude C Compiler: What It Reveals About the Future of Software
February 25, 2026
Compilers occupy a special place in computer science. They’re a canonical course in computer science education. Building one is a rite of passage. It forces you to confront how software actually works, by examining languages, abstractions, hardware, and the boundary between human intent and machine execution.
Compilers once helped humans speak to machines. Now machines are beginning to help humans build compilers.
A number of recent software projects using code generation tools have seemed like watershed moments in the evolution of this technology. recent browsers developed solely using agentic coding systems and now a C compiler show how far code generation has come in even recent months.
Here, Chris Lattner takes a deeper look at this project and implications it has and what it reflects about the state of agentic coding systems in early 2026.
