Rewriting pycparser with the help of an LLM
Summary
An in-depth case study of using an LLM coding agent to replace pycparser's PLY-based parser with a hand-written recursive-descent parser. It covers motivations around dependency maintenance, parsing strategy choices, the agent-driven port process, test-driven validation, and the resulting improvements in performance and code clarity. The article also reflects on the limitations of AI-generated code and the importance of human oversight.