alt Hacker NewsA meta-trend I find interesting is there's a lot of projects using AI to rewrite existing systems in new programming languages. Most often in Rust.
1. Bun rewritten in Rust
2. Flow rewritten in Rust
3. The react compiler was rewritten in Rust
4. Grit is a new implementation of Git in Rust
5. I've made my own rust rewrite of postgres that passes 100% of the regression and isolation tests[0][1]
One of the many things I did to deal with this was an audit skill that would:
1. Find a small chunk of code to rewrite
2. Have a list of things that it was looking for in each piece of code that's being rewritten
3. Place that next to the code being translated
4. If that document didn't exist and/or didn't say the code was passing the audit, code wouldn't be merged
5. As I found problems and anti-patterns I would add those to the skill over time
Complicated old "boring" infra software might actually be the most AI-rewriteable code right now
Replies
luka2233 • yesterday at 10:18 PM
+1 CC helped me finally shipped a Rust project I had been sleeping on for years.
I have been experimenting in this general area myself. I started by doing a port of Lua to Rust, then did Valkey to Rust using my Rust Lua for scripting, and now I've been working nginx in Rust.
I was thinking for all of these that the end goal is to take some existing technology and add some novel features rather than just X in Rust so what I have so far.
1. The Lua project bundles Lua 5.1 - 5.5 in one binary and one npm package so it's easy to run in the browser or CloudFlare Worker etc.
2. The Valkey (Redis) port builds something called EdgeStash - lets you run Valkey with Lua scripting in a CloudFlare Durable Object programmable with Lua scripting.
https://edgestash-valdr.ianmclaughlin1398.workers.dev/ that's a demo of the Edge Valkey node running.
I've been meaning to take take it and do something like yours that is sweet!