--- title: Old and new apps, via modern coding agents | daily.dev description: Mathematician Terence Tao shares his experience using modern AI coding agents to port his old Java 1.0 applets (originally written in 1999) to JavaScript, and... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/old-and-new-apps-via-modern-coding-agents-dawf5y4tm twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Old and new apps, via modern coding agents | daily.dev og:description: Mathematician Terence Tao shares his experience using modern AI coding agents to port his old Java 1.0 applets (originally written in 1999) to JavaScript, and... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/old-and-new-apps-via-modern-coding-agents-dawf5y4tm og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/dAWf5Y4TM.png og:image:alt: Old and new apps, via modern coding agents og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Old and new apps, via modern coding agents **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Mathematician Terence Tao shares his experience using modern AI coding agents to port his old Java 1.0 applets (originally written in 1999) to JavaScript, and to build entirely new interactive math visualizations. The porting of ~24 applets took only hours, with the agent finding more bugs than it introduced. Tao also used 'vibe coding' to finally complete a special relativity visualization he had abandoned decades ago, and quickly built a new Gilbreath conjecture visualization. He reflects on the low downside risk of LLM-generated code for non-critical visual aids and plans to add such interactive supplements to future papers. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Vibe coding will bring a wonderful proliferation of software](https://daily.dev/posts/vibe-coding-will-bring-a-wonderful-proliferation-of-software-r0vb9ldnu) · The Register · 1 upvotes · 1 comments - [Simon Willison’s Weblog](https://daily.dev/posts/simon-willison-s-weblog-ypcurxob3) · Hacker News · 1 upvotes · 1 comments --- Tags: [#javascript](https://daily.dev/tags/javascript), [#java](https://daily.dev/tags/java), [#ai-agents](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-agents), [#vibe-coding](https://daily.dev/tags/vibe-coding) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/old-and-new-apps-via-modern-coding-agents-dawf5y4tm) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Old and new apps, via modern coding agents","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/old-and-new-apps-via-modern-coding-agents-dawf5y4tm","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/old-and-new-apps-via-modern-coding-agents-dawf5y4tm"},"datePublished":"2026-07-12T12:53:33.456Z","dateModified":"2026-07-12T12:54:24.494Z","description":"Mathematician Terence Tao shares his experience using modern AI coding agents to port his old Java 1.0 applets (originally written in 1999) to JavaScript, and...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/7e82f15dd1ae903e7d167dcfa3b08304?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/7e82f15dd1ae903e7d167dcfa3b08304?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Hacker News","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hacker News","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/hn","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/old-and-new-apps-via-modern-coding-agents-dawf5y4tm","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"javascript,java,ai-agents,vibe-coding","timeRequired":"PT4M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hacker News","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Old and new apps, via modern coding agents"}]} ```