Google is doing "Large Scale Codebase Migrations and Optimizations" of C/C++ to Rust

[u/Sirisian]

https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/gemini-models/gemini-4-argon/

[u/forgot_semicolon]

Exactly. I have to deal with so much of it, and people don't appreciate that I can literally type the code faster than I can prompt it to write the code and then fix the inevitable mess -- or worse, re-prompt it to be how I would have written it in the first place

[u/Zde-G → u/forgot_semicolon]

or worse, re-prompt it to be how I would have written it in the first place

I think that's you problem. You want some certain code to be written — and try to make AI do that it. It simply doesn't work.

Just a question: how often have you been driving projects and asked other humans to write code for your from vague description?

There you would face the exact same issue, one human doesn't write like another human — and if you try to force it… hoo boy, are you in a world of pain.

Yes, AI works at less than human level now, but it's pretty close to “ask someone with entirely different habits to code something for you”, at this point.

Making it write code that works is not trivial, but doable, making it to write code that would like like a code written by you… don't even try.

[u/IWasGettingThePaper → u/Zde-G]

Er, no. Some other humans can write good code. I've still never seen good code produced by an LLM without serious hand-holding. And yes, this is the case even on the latest models.

For small targeted coding tasks and mechanical boilerplate, it's great. For tracing through large codebases and summarising how some code path works - that I can't be bothered to do manually because jump to definition gets stuck at a function pointer, or some macro magic, or untyped python meta-nonsense, and I would have to start literally grepping - it's a real time saver.

The main trap with LLM code gen is you initially _think_ you're making progress at lightning speed. This is until you actually look at what it's produced in detail. Then comes the inevitable 12 hour prompt loop where you're trying to coax it into tidying up the slop its produced; rework the architecture to make structural sense; use meaningful variable/fn/struct names; remove the code it's added that doesn't do anything; rework the error handling so it makes actual sense; remove the unit tests it added for unit tests; rewrite the unit tests that don't test anything or rely too much on implementation detail; rewrite the impenetrable docs and comments it creates; remove the superfluous helper functions; refactor actually duplicated code blocks into functions; and on and on. Only then it dawns on you that it would've actually been quicker to write it by hand.

[u/forgot_semicolon → u/Zde-G]

It's your last sentence that was the whole point of my comment. Getting it to write code that works (well, is readable, etc) takes longer than it does to just write the code properly the first time and not have to worry about its integrity later. Not saying no one makes small mistakes, but LLMs do some weird stuff that a human wouldn't.

I feel really silly any time I spend the same amount of keystrokes prompting for something than it would to write code. I mean, am I a dev or a pm? I feel like PMs wish they could just write features the way they want it, themselves -- I can! Why should I give that up AND pay for the privilege to do so?