Jas: AI-Paired Engineering as a Revival of N-Version Programming
I report a case study in AI-paired software engineering: five working ports of a vector illustration application across Rust, Swift, OCaml, Python, and browser-based platforms, built by a single developer in approximately 120 evening hours. The methodology pairs AI-assisted implementation with two safeguards -- a precise executable YAML specification serving as the single source of truth, and parallel implementations functioning as a built-in differential-testing layer. The five ports share a 23{,}000-line specification; per-port native code ranges from 0 to roughly 95{,}000 lines, reflecting the specification's escape hatch. I argue that AI-paired engineering, conditional on these two sa...
| Authors | Jason Hickey |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.SE |
| Published | 5 June 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 5 June 2026 |
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