That's not writing. That's typingTruman Capote, about On the Road
a professor in one of my first CS courses began a lecture with something like a parable. playing the hapless software engineer, a text editor was exercised on repetitive text-shuffling edits. moving to the chalkboard, the conclusion was drawn as a Fermi estimate: it is a net saving of your lifetime to invest in learning, as soon as possible, to type quickly — and use vim. it was 2019, GPT-2 had recently released but was not featured in the calculation.
meaningless work
By meaningless work I simply mean work which does not make you money or accomplish a conventional purpose. For instance putting wooden blocks from one box to another, then puttting the blocks back to the original box, back and forth, back and forth, etc., is a fine example of meaningless work. Or digging a hole, then covering it is another example. Walter De Maria
programming has never been about typing, it's still a minor but appreciable part of the craft. what has changed is the relationship between typist and code: the proliferation of LLM-assisted tooling has for many situations removed the need for direct mechanical handling of program text.
to choose the less effecient option is often reasonable, to avoid effeciency altogether is something else. re-typing, rote copying, for no reason other than its own sake, is my extended exercise in meaningless work.
procedure
| file | count |
|---|---|
| header file | 15230 |
| C program | 16551 |
| C++ program | 34797 |
| shared library | 24 |
| DLL library | 6 |
| dynamic library | 94 |
| debug info file | 51 |
| patch | 4 |
| static library | 125 |
| assembler program | 12599 |
| fortran program | 3138 |
| java program | 52 |
| objective-C program | 572 |
| objective-C++ program | 1910 |
| objective-C++ program | 572 |
| perl program | 14 |
| python program | 2805 |
| shell program | 148 |
| awk program | 2 |
| lua program | 6 |
| ruby program | 3 |
| symbols file | 75 |
| automake file | 21 |
| cmake file | 2492 |
| configuration file | 851 |
| executable file | 241 |
| GNU LD script | 5 |
| initialization file | 8 |
| javascript file | 56 |
| JSON file | 314 |
| lisp program | 12 |
| makefile | 970 |
| man page | 8 |
| manifest file | 11 |
| module-definition file | 239 |
| pkg-config file | 2 |
| rust program | 1 |
| SGML document | 54 |
| symbolic link | 19 |
| XML document | 57 |
| PE binary file | 32 |
| ABI list | 9 |
| argument file | 2 |
| backup file | 1 |
| BibTeX document | 1 |
| command file | 59 |
| compiled object | 1469 |
| configure script | 1 |
| CSS style sheet | 27 |
| CSV file | 58 |
| data list | 3 |
| DOS batch file | 12 |
| doxygen file | 8 |
| ELF binary file | 90 |
| git file | 37 |
| HTML page | 103 |
| include file | 499 |
| MATLAB file | 1 |
| memory dump file | 9 |
| ML program | 27 |
| MS Office document | 5 |
| POD document | 1 |
| precompiled header | 6 |
| property list | 67 |
| protocol buffer file | 5 |
| Qt translation file | 21 |
| resource file | 127 |
| RNG file | 1 |
| RPC file | 4 |
| RST file | 2065 |
| TeX document | 11 |
| vim settings file | 16 |
| xcode files | 1 |
| YAML file | 1322 |
| icon | 9 |
| image file | 197 |
| PDF file | 12 |
| vector image file | 28 |
| data file | 422 |
| directory | 15103 |
| archive | 81 |
| change log | 6 |
| information file | 39 |
| license | 34 |
| readme file | 195 |
| text file | 57673 |
| other | 1737 |
the contents of the repository llvm-project
(github.com)
are progressively re-typed.
snapshot 21.1.8 is used to
coincide
with the release of Anthropic's LLM-generated C compiler
(anthropic.com).
the text is linearized by the following procedure:
directories are ordered by modification date, oldest first.
contents of each directory are completed together, in alphabetical order.
the first to be completed then are SECURITY.md, LICENSE.txt, and .clang-format.
copying is done single-pass:
typos are left uncorreted.
exceptional cases
(binary files?)
will be handled as they arise.
the repository includes 175,226 files of greatly varying length. by rough estimation this requires 3 years of full-time work to re-type, which I do not very seriously intend to complete. it violates the spirit of the work to benefit from serious study, I accept there are arguably productive side-effects to this.
progress
- 2026.02.06
-
complete:
SECURITY.md,LICENSE.txt,.clang-format, andllvm-libgcc/