6 ms·

Honestly, I initially thought rewriting an entire codebase with AI would be a huge mistake. After reading this, I'm starting to think I was wrong. If projects

by kburman 2mo ago

Honestly, I initially thought rewriting an entire codebase with AI would be a huge mistake. After reading this, I'm starting to think I was wrong. If projects like Bun can be substantially rewritten and shipped to millions of users, it suggests we're entering a very different phase of software development. Today's AI-generated rewrites may not produce code that humans would consider high quality or maintainable. But I'm beginning to wonder whether that will even matter in a few months. If AI is the primary consumer, maintainer, and refactorer of code, human readability becomes far less important than correctness, performance, and the ability to iterate. This feels like a shift where software may no longer exist as a long-lived artifact in its current form. Instead of writing and maintaining applications for years, we may generate, adapt, and discard them continuously for each use case.

sdevonoes 2mo ago
We are the ones to get to decide. Do we want that? I don’t. But im just a single data point
rho138 2mo ago
That sounds like a massive waste of finite energy and compute resources.
- CrimsonRain 2mo ago
  That's like saying let's stay with horses. We'll develop faster and better tech. We'll find resources to feed that. Use that to build better. Access better resources. We'll mine asteroids. We'll harness much more from the sun. The factory must grow.
  - rho138 2mo ago
    Is that before or after the earths atmosphere acidifies for humans and our bodies can’t hold enough phosphorus or calcium for basic metabolic tasks? You have until 2050: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-026-01918-5 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-026-01918-5
    - CrimsonRain 2mo ago
      these doom and gloom reports also said half the land will be under water by now and average temperature will be 40c. Didn't happen. Earth is in a cooler period and it will get very warm. These crappy climate change activists will not get anything done but to hold us back. We need more power, more tech, and more abundance of things. We will need to engineer our way out of real climate change.
      - rho138 2mo ago
        Don’t look up - or that hubris might crush you.
      - LtWorf 2mo ago
        Oh we should certainly trust the opinion of the science denier. Surely his opinions will be based on hard data and not on feelings!
esjeon 2mo ago
> But I'm beginning to wonder whether that will even matter in a few months. At that point, even Bun itself doesn't matter. All intermediate tools don't matter if LLMs can reliably write something large. The problem is that LLM is not quite there yet. The rewrite was only possible because they mostly stick to 1-to-1 translation resulting in non-idiomatic Rust code. So, what from there? I don't think they can really build up a sane codebase from that state. They only shot themselves with a bigger gun.
- jqbd 2mo ago
  Isn't it just: "while true {refactorIdiomatically(); fixErrors()}"
  - folkrav 2mo ago
    /goal fix all bugs
- brabel 2mo ago
  > The rewrite was only possible because they mostly stick to 1-to-1 translation resulting in non-idiomatic Rust code. That’s patently false, just read Jarred’s own blog post describing how that was the first stage only, they went through many more to get the amount of non idiomatic, unsafe Rust code to an acceptable level.
  - klibertp 2mo ago
    Somebody checked[1], and they discovered that the "stages" past the first had minimal impact on the unsafe blocks count. That's just one metric, but it makes me doubt your claim that there was/is a lot of work put into making the translated code idiomatic Rust. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48967630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48967630
whateveracct 2mo ago
> Honestly, I initially thought rewriting an entire codebase with AI would be a huge mistake. After reading this, I'm starting to think I was wrong. > If projects like Bun can be substantially rewritten and shipped to millions of users, it suggests we're entering a very different phase of software development. exactly. this wasn't a technical project. this was a marketing stunt that worked on you.
fg137 2mo ago
> I initially thought rewriting an entire codebase with AI would be a huge mistake Keep in mind that you are not Anthropic, and you'll likely NOT consider rewrite at all if you don't have unlimited budget
davewritescode 2mo ago
Some of what you’re saying is likely true but quality is something that will never be optional. There is quantitative data suggest that LLMs perform better on higher quality code base which makes sense. Code that is well organized and coherent will make better use of the context window. Software refactoring and tech debt is absolutely where LLMs will shine as is evidenced by the Bun rewrite.

by kburman 2mo ago

sdevonoes 2mo ago

We are the ones to get to decide. Do we want that? I don’t. But im just a single data point

rho138 2mo ago

That sounds like a massive waste of finite energy and compute resources.

CrimsonRain 2mo ago
That's like saying let's stay with horses. We'll develop faster and better tech. We'll find resources to feed that. Use that to build better. Access better resources. We'll mine asteroids. We'll harness much more from the sun. The factory must grow.
- rho138 2mo ago
  Is that before or after the earths atmosphere acidifies for humans and our bodies can’t hold enough phosphorus or calcium for basic metabolic tasks? You have until 2050: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-026-01918-5 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-026-01918-5
  - CrimsonRain 2mo ago
    these doom and gloom reports also said half the land will be under water by now and average temperature will be 40c. Didn't happen. Earth is in a cooler period and it will get very warm. These crappy climate change activists will not get anything done but to hold us back. We need more power, more tech, and more abundance of things. We will need to engineer our way out of real climate change.
    - rho138 2mo ago
      Don’t look up - or that hubris might crush you.
    - LtWorf 2mo ago
      Oh we should certainly trust the opinion of the science denier. Surely his opinions will be based on hard data and not on feelings!

esjeon 2mo ago

> But I'm beginning to wonder whether that will even matter in a few months. At that point, even Bun itself doesn't matter. All intermediate tools don't matter if LLMs can reliably write something large. The problem is that LLM is not quite there yet. The rewrite was only possible because they mostly stick to 1-to-1 translation resulting in non-idiomatic Rust code. So, what from there? I don't think they can really build up a sane codebase from that state. They only shot themselves with a bigger gun.

jqbd 2mo ago
Isn't it just: "while true {refactorIdiomatically(); fixErrors()}"
- folkrav 2mo ago
  /goal fix all bugs
brabel 2mo ago
> The rewrite was only possible because they mostly stick to 1-to-1 translation resulting in non-idiomatic Rust code. That’s patently false, just read Jarred’s own blog post describing how that was the first stage only, they went through many more to get the amount of non idiomatic, unsafe Rust code to an acceptable level.
- klibertp 2mo ago
  Somebody checked[1], and they discovered that the "stages" past the first had minimal impact on the unsafe blocks count. That's just one metric, but it makes me doubt your claim that there was/is a lot of work put into making the translated code idiomatic Rust. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48967630 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48967630

whateveracct 2mo ago

> Honestly, I initially thought rewriting an entire codebase with AI would be a huge mistake. After reading this, I'm starting to think I was wrong. > If projects like Bun can be substantially rewritten and shipped to millions of users, it suggests we're entering a very different phase of software development. exactly. this wasn't a technical project. this was a marketing stunt that worked on you.

fg137 2mo ago

> I initially thought rewriting an entire codebase with AI would be a huge mistake Keep in mind that you are not Anthropic, and you'll likely NOT consider rewrite at all if you don't have unlimited budget

davewritescode 2mo ago

Some of what you’re saying is likely true but quality is something that will never be optional. There is quantitative data suggest that LLMs perform better on higher quality code base which makes sense. Code that is well organized and coherent will make better use of the context window. Software refactoring and tech debt is absolutely where LLMs will shine as is evidenced by the Bun rewrite.