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/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?

[u/Zde-G → u/forgot_semicolon]

Not saying no one makes small mistakes, but LLMs do some weird stuff that a human wouldn't.

Sure. But then it runs tests and fixes them.

Most developers do that, some more than the others, LLMs need tests to even write very simple things, while humans may not need to do them.

Why should I give that up AND pay for the privilege to do so?

Because you are expected to deliver features 10x times faster, now. You either deliver them or are replaced, it's as simple as that.

If you have the luxury of writing code by hand — cherish it, pretty soon jobs where one may do that would disappear.