[pronik]

By reading this thread I've learned that, apparently, you are not allowed to rewrite a large piece of software backed by a large test suite in another language within two weeks otherwise you are a witch and need to be burned on a stake. You are also not allowed to move from the PoC phase to lets-do-it phase within a couple of days without being called names. Why are we concerned with speed all of a sudden? Are we in the "people will literally die if a car moved faster than 25 mph" era of software engineering? Let them do whatever they want, they've shown the will to move on from wrong decisions, they will do it again if the Rust port fails to deliver and the whole industry gets to learn from it, whatever "it" might become.

[solid_fuel]

I can't ignore how much this sounds like Stockton Rush.

> "Apparently if you build a submersible with carbon fiber you are a witch and need to be burned on a stake. But look we're making reliable trips down to the Titanic with no problems."

Realistically, this is a forum of experienced engineers watching a company make some extremely questionable but very flashy engineering decisions. There's going to be a lot of people standing around here going "gee I dunno, that seems questionable".

Personally, I think the rewrite will largely work - logically, direct translations from one language to another are pretty well within the realm of the few things LLMs should perform extremely well at. But I also think more information will come out showing this was much more bespoke than just prompting an agent to do the translation. This just feels too much like an ad for Anthropic, I think it's likely there was a lot more human involvement and planning than we are being told.

[andrepd]

The top comment in the thread explains it pretty well, so please don't pretend it's anything else. The point is they went from "chillax, it's just an experiment" to "we'll switch languages via a 1M line vibecoded patch" in two days. People that rely on this software are understandably fearful, since there is no way this change has been properly revised and tested. Although perhaps the mistake was relying on such software in the first place... And so are contributors too, which have seen essentially the entire codebase replaced in a week.

[shaewest]

People relying on this software can absolutely choose to stay on current/recent versions until this becomes more mature. My assumption is that the current state allows for public testing, but anyone needing a stable version wouldn't be affected and can choose to not be affected by it.

[0x457]

Why "no way"? You're also forgetting extensive test suite?

Merging it so quickly only odd if you're planning on retaining current community.

It's not like it was merged and shipped to every single stable distro overnight. That's how things get tested.

[ethanrutherford]

That you're only just "learning" that these things are true is a damning admission. And to fix your bad analogy, it's more like "hey maybe we shouldn't be allowing f1 street races through school zones".

[shaewest]

That analogy might work if this situation is 'reckless behaviour risking children's safety' but in this case it's much closer to 'We made an large, potentially risky change that you can choose to avoid until it's more mature'

[wiseowise]

The analogy is just bad to begin with.

It's more like "we've switched ingredients while actively denying that they'll be switched".

[shaewest]

They never denied they'd switch, just that they'd need solid improvements confirmed before they switched. Clearly internally they've decided they've seen the gains necessary to carry on with the switch

[wiseowise]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48019226

> This whole thread is an overreaction. 302 comments about code that does not work. We haven’t committed to rewriting. There’s a very high chance all this code gets thrown out completely

I know words are hard, but if you find it hard to believe any humans here, then feed it into your favorite LLM.

[shaewest]

> I’m curious to see what a working version of this looks, what it feels like, how it performs and if/how hard it’d be to get it to pass Bun’s test suite and be maintainable. I’d like to be able to compare a viable Rust version and a Zig version side by side.

I know reading the second line of your quote is hard...

[ukblewis]

This is silly IMHO. They haven’t released a new official Bun version with this code yet. It is a canary release. Give them a chance to figure it out and try it out and see how the limited number of production users of bun as a runtime experience the move. If it succeeds, this will massively accelerate development and they will have much to teach us all about how to safely code 1M lines with AI and merge it in days. If it fails, we will know that AI isn’t ready for that yet

[happytoexplain]

The AI polarization is making me sick. Please don't let this style of comment become normalized on HN (and that includes equivalently tribalistic anti-AI comments).

[wiseowise]

> By reading this thread I've learned that, apparently, you are not allowed to rewrite a large piece of software backed by a large test suite in another language within two weeks otherwise you are a witch and need to be burned on a stake.

You've just learned that you can't do random shit and not get called out? Were you born yesterday?

[zx0r23]

Anyone running bun in production right now has to be sweating lol, this is a ridiculous change for a part of your software stack that really ought to be reliable.

[versecafe]

Not sweating, just heavily regretting running a fork to shim zig code in and hard forking to focus on stability over meaningless features and flashy AI rewrites.

[tokioyoyo]

Heavy implications on how the future will be formed if things go well with this port. It would prove a lot of people wrong if things go well 3 months down the road.

[happytoexplain]

Not really - three months is nowhere near long enough to demonstrate if a large piece of software has issues or not.

[tokioyoyo]

With the amount of applications running on Bun? I’d say enough.

[ncruces]

You think they'll ~all merrily move to the new version?

[pronik]

Would be enough if Claude Code moves without major issues

[tokioyoyo]

Doesn’t have to. It’s a big bet, with a huge payout for Anthropic.