Old and new apps, via modern coding agents

13 hours ago

Terence Tao's early interest in machine-assisted math teaching began in 1999 with Java applets for courses and visualizations.
Modern AI helped migrate old web content and port Java applets to JavaScript, reviving them with graphical upgrades and few bugs.
He used AI to create new applets, including a special relativity visualization (like 'Inkscape in Minkowski space') and a tool for the Gilbreath conjecture.
The process was painless, and Tao plans to add interactive visualizations as supplements to future papers, accepting low downside risk from LLM-generated code.
User feedback on applets included suggestions for improvements, and Tao discussed technical details, such as handling reference frames in the relativity app.
To avoid obsolescence, Tao notes that LLMs can understand and port code effectively if it has logical structure and standard mathematical context.

Hasty Briefsbeta