Researchers Revive Two Historic Programs That Wrote Programs, Using Claude Code to Do It

Executable Archaeology: Reanimating the Heuristic Compiler (1961) and KBEmacs (1984)

Two early programs that modeled how people write code have been brought back to life by running their original source. Herbert Simon's Heuristic Compiler (1961) applied General Problem Solver means-ends analysis to programming; MIT's KBEmacs (1984) let programmers assemble code from familiar "cliches" via a stylized English command language. The reanimations reproduce Simon's 1963 compiled output and KBEmacs's December 1984 SQRT self-test. Side by side, the two theories converge — and the authors note today's AI coding assistants lack such explicit, executable theories of programming.