That's true and I fully agree. I don't think LLMs' progress in writing a toy C compiler diminishes the achievements that the GCC project did.
But also we've just witnessed LLMs go from being a glorified line auto-complete tool to it writing a C compiler in ~3 years. And I think that's something. And noting how we keep moving the goal post.
The pattern matching rote-student is acing the class. No surprises here.
There is no need to understand the subject from first principles to ace tests.
Majority of high-school and college kids know this.
But also we've just witnessed LLMs go from being a glorified line auto-complete tool to it writing a C compiler in ~3 years. And I think that's something. And noting how we keep moving the goal post.