> Can all the maintainers of the c codebase move over to maintaining (forward) the Rust codebase. Surely there'll be some friction, and losses to friction.

there are always losses. Anyone who can maintain a non-trival C code base can maintain Rust. It will take them some time to learn, but learning a new programming language is not hard for someone who wants to. In a couple years they will be just as productive.

The question is do they want to? I do not have much hope the existing maintainers will move. Some will, but I expect the majority will not.

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kayo_20211030 9 hours ago | parent [-]

If a business decides to migrate from X-lang to Y-lang (or X-system to Y-system) for some particular and sensible reason can the business afford to spend a couple of years to restore its productivity to what it was?

It might, but there'll be a significant cost, even outside of developer attrition. In a lot of operating businesses the opportunity cost is quite high given all the moving parts that sustain its current operations i.e. people, processes, etc.

It's a tough call; and a one-time automated code conversion may be the smallest part of it.

	▲	bluGill 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		My company spent over a billion dollars just to rewrite a C++ project with a lot of technical debt in C++. We are finally making money after the rewrite, but that was a lot of cost and I honestly cannot recommend it to anyone. I lean to what I'm trying to figure out how to do now: how do I rewrite the small parts that change the most into something else while keeping the whole working all along. Best part is other people are already at different points in the journey and we don't have to all move at once, nor pay the price all at once.