*The Rustification of Bun#

Rewriting 500,000 lines of Zig into another language would be a gargantuan undertaking if done by hand. “A rewrite in another language would take a small team of engineers a full year. It would mean freezing bugfixes, security fixes or feature development for that time,” Sumner wrote.

Instead, Sumner went with Claude. He spun up about 50 dynamic Claude Code workflows, reaching a peak of about 1,300 lines of code per minute and generating over a million lines of Rust code. The job took 11 days and cost about $165,000 at API pricing. Claude Fable did most of the heavy lifting.

  • Eager Eagle@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    you can’t compare the tech debt because it’s essentially a line by line translation from an existing codebase, not 1M brand new lines of code

    • ReptilianCleric@lemmy.zip
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      19 hours ago

      That’s…irrelevant.

      Really. The specific details of the task doesn’t change that this was automated. Until it’s reviewed, it’s basically a pile of Schrödinger’s bugs and security holes. That’s the technical debt.

      • Eager Eagle@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        It really isn’t. A line by line translation doesn’t introduce new logic and doesn’t change the system architecture. Saying it carries the same tech debt as brand new code is just not true.