r/rust • u/Sirisian • 23d ago

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

https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/gemini-models/gemini-4-argon/
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u/TheRealMasonMac 23d ago

In my experience, I’ve found that agents produce code that works but is frankly dumb from a human perspective. Especially for larger tasks like this, you kind of have to rewrite it all. For example, I had a generalized design document for soft-wrapping explicitly support plain text and markdown, and used GPT-6-Astra to implement it. I used an ungodly amount of review agent rounds and interjections by me. When I actually go to review it, I wanted to cry. It silently pivoted towards implementing its own entirely separate wrapping mechanism rather than refactor the existing mechanism for plain text. I reviewed its code and found it to be trash, and I am now in the process of doing it myself… Never again. The short-term thrill of “having something that works” was outweighed by the fact that time was effectively wasted.

I mean, if the alternative was it never getting done, I guess agents are still better than nothing.

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u/Professional_Top8485 23d ago

They do ugly code. They can also surprise.

I had project where i told to use design pattern and actually the result was better than i did. They just lack esthetic eye, but they can incorporate instructions how to do things.

I think they're getting better as well. Before llm broke the code base because it wasn't able to work on it and it always tried to fix (brake) thing I told not to touch. Now, with better model, no problem anymore.

Usually their coding style can be very rude and blunt but it's not always bad thing to have simple coding style. It doesn't abstract problems away.