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Comment by davesque | Hacker News Reader

I mean...why not do it? Are you implying it would only have value if someone painstakingly did it by hand?

The endavour doesn't have much value at all except as an experiment how well translating C code to Rust via LLM works (but you don't need an LLM for that either, C2Rust was already a thing).

Also, the C version of Quake compiled to WebAssembly and running in browsers is just as "safe".

But C isn't as nice to work with. Maybe OP just thought it was fun to see it take shape and wanted to share it. Why do any sort of little side project like this at all? Just seems like everyone is judging this too harshly. If an LLM is reasonably good at this sort of thing, and you think it would be cool to see Quake written in Rust running in the browser, I say just do it and have fun and don't be shy about doing show and tell about it.

> But C isn't as nice to work with.

Only in your opinion :)

What about what about people learn and possibly the fun they get during the process?

Sure this project won't save humanity or optimize some KPI pleasing some obscure hierarchy.

Let people have fun, as long as they don't hurt anyone personally I'm fine with it and even I'm happy learning someone had some cool moments.

All commits in the project are from Claude. What's fun or to be learned from that?

It's of course everybody's personal choice, and it's nice for an experiment to figure out what Claude can do. But why go on HN and brag about a project entirely created by Claude when literally everybody else can do the same thing without lifting a finger?

Somebody had to do it and they did it.

I see the result of an LLM port only as a baseline. I would expect any serious developer to rewrite and refactor the code beyond a verbatim translation and to make it more maintainable, readable and robust. In short, to turn it into idiomatic Rust.

If you're not going to do that don't post your results online, just keep it to yourself. Anyone could've done this. Even people without any programming skills.

> If you're not going to do that don't post your results online, just keep it to yourself

...I mean...I just don't really know how to respond to that. Who the heck cares if someone posts this online? If you don't like it, just move on. Sheesh. Lookout everyone, this guy doesn't approve of your side project.

Does translating Quake to Rust with an LLM count as any sort of project, let alone a side project?

Does budding a cabinet in a weekend counts as any sort of project, given that you used factory made wooden planks and power tools, instead of starting by slaughtering your horse with your bare hands, so you can make a knife from its bones, and use that to make a saw from its sinews and hair, and use that to fell a tree, and...?

Those who remember the time before a new technology will always have a different world view than those raised with it. Some of us will prefer it, some of us won’t. Eventually no one will remain who remembers. That’s just how humanity works.

The definition of "serious" developer is changing. An LLM can already produce maintainable, readable, robust code.

It's getting to the point that LLM produced code is indistinguishable from even the best handwritten code.

There's no value in gatekeeping,the code side of software is becoming increasingly democratised, and the barrier to entry is getting closer to no barrier at all.

> It's getting to the point that LLM produced code is indistinguishable from even the best handwritten code.

I think you should read more code ;)

Yeah when I read comments like this I'm thinking either the commenters did not actually bother reviewing the LLM code or they must have access to much better models than those I'm using (claude). Yesterday I reviewed 1500 lines of code which was reduced to 500 by just asking claude "why do we need this" on well chosen parts of the code 3-4 times, to which it would say things like "I made an optimization, but actually this doesn't pay for itself" then explain how the optimizations would actually make the whole thing slower...

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