On: I used Fable to rewrite 65kLoC of Go in Rust. It cost $400

[UltraSane]

I found this part to be interesting/clever:

1. Extract the data representation

Ask the LLM to represent your code as any combination of:

    graphs
    ontologies
    hierarchical state machines
    UML process charts
    constraints
    math formulae

2 Operate on the representations

3 Convert representations back to code

[richstokes → UltraSane]

Do we think that was necessary? What would have happened if OP had just asked it to rewrite and test/validate each piece as it went until everything is verified and complete?

My gut feeling is this is doing way too much, and it would've figured it out.

[aka-rider → richstokes]

But we know, Bun was 535496 lines for $165000.

The whole point of this experiment was to try and make the rewrite as cheap as possible.

[never_inline → aka-rider]

Oh no, bun had quite a bit of machinery: https://bun.com/blog/bun-in-rust#loops-that-write-review-cod...

[aka-rider → never_inline]

True, the main problem is how to split the work. They decided to go file by file.

To be fair, I haven't try exactly "rewrite in Rust" prompt, but I cannot imagine for this to work.

[UltraSane → richstokes]

converting code to more abstract and denser representations and then manipulating them makes sense to me. Finding better representations is like half of mathematics.

[richstokes → UltraSane]

Is code being converted to / represented in maths that much more helpful for an LLM that deals in language primarily, by definition? I have no idea, interesting though!

[aka-rider → UltraSane]

this is the meat, yes.