Old and new apps, via modern coding agents by Terry Tao
Renowned mathematician Terry Tao discusses his experience using AI coding agents to modernize his legacy Java applets into JavaScript. He notes that the AI successfully ported the code with minimal errors and even identified bugs in his original work.
Why it matters
This highlights the practical utility of AI coding assistants in technical debt reduction and the preservation of legacy digital educational tools.
I have been interested in machine-assisted ways to do and teach mathematics from as far back as 1999, when I started coding several applets in Java 1.0 , both for my complex analysis and linear algebra courses, to visualize various mathematical objects I was interested in (such as honeycombs or Besicovitch sets). This was moderately successful; but the applets were time-consuming to program, and eventually the standards for web pages stopped supporting this version of Java, and the applets became non-functional.
The article is a personal account of a technical experiment and does not push a political or ideological agenda.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in