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

Researchers successfully revived two historical AI programs—Herbert Simon's Heuristic Compiler (1961) and MIT's KBEmacs (1984)—using a methodology called Executable Archaeology to study how early AI systems modeled programming. Despite their different approaches, both systems shared the insight that programming involves adapting and combining existing routines rather than pure problem-solving, a characteristic largely absent from modern AI coding assistants despite their greater capabilities.