I just tried the following prompt:<p>> please write a rust library implementing a variant of simple8b integer compression augmented to use run-length encoding whenever it's beneficial to do so.<p>Initially I was sort of impressed, it quickly generated a program which looked like rust code, and provided an explanation that, while not as technically detailed as I'd hoped, seemed to be at least related to the topic.<p>Then I tried to compile the program. Turns out the bot didn't quite actually write rust, it had written something closely resembling rust though, and the compiler errors helped me fix it.<p>Then I tried to run the tests--yes! the bot even wrote tests, although it did so in a totally bone-headed way by writing multiple distinct tests in one test function--not good. Panic on integer overflow trying to left shift a value. There were also multiple pages of compiler warnings complaining about dead code, unused functions, enum variants, etc. I always fail on warnings.<p>This is not a lot of code. 190 lines including tests. At this point, given that I already have concerns about its correctness, I don't think there's anything I can really use here. I'm worried the deeper I dig the worse it'll get, so better to cut my losses now, sit down and read the simple8b paper, and implement this from first principles.<p>Every time I try to use one of these things it's the same story. I cannot understand the hype. I'm genuinely trying but I just can't understand it.