> Large Scale Codebase Migrations and Optimizations: Argon agents are working on migrating C/C++ codebases to Rust across Google—scaling from tens of thousands of lines in core libraries like re2, libgav1 up to 800K+ lines for the Fuchsia OS Zircon kernel.

To me this is way more significant than other random c++-to-rust-AI-rewrite. If they can pull it off on core C++ libraries en masse, I don't know if C++ will still be relevant in a few years.

I look forward to a post from google on this effort.

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mattlondon 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> I don't know if C++ will still be relevant in a few years.

And people are worried about human extinction when this is the potential trade-off!

C++'s death cannot come soon-enough.

Seriously though, things have changed so incredibly rapidly in the past year or so. I have never been such an efficient or such a proficient engineer than I have this past year (delivering feature after feature, project after project, faster and better than I could before with better feedback from users etc) and I don't even see the code any more. It could be c++, it could be python, or java or what ever - I don't really care any more: the computer deals with that trivia while I concentrate on what to build and how it should work.

Its amazing. It really is.

	▲	randomperson321 2 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		[delayed]
	▲	onlyrealcuzzo an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		If Fuschia ever gets finished, that's a pretty good benchmark we've reached AGI.

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mhils an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There is a blog post on (the early baby steps of) that: https://bughunters.google.com/blog/scaling-memory-safety. We have multiple AI-assisted Rust rewrites running in production now.

(Full disclosure: I am one of the coauthors)

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SwellJoe 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"I don't know if C++ will still be relevant in a few years."

The standards body members are still fighting about whether memory safety is important enough to change the language for, so, I would guess the answer is "no".

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Zagitta an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah that was abundantly clear when Bjarne Stroustrup published "A call to action: Think seriously about “safety”; then do something sensible about it"[0] as a reaction to NSA's recommendation to no longer use C/C++.

[0] https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2023/p27...

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izacus an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

C++ will outlive you.

	▲	SwellJoe 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Well, sure, but that doesn't mean it's not in a decline that is very unlikely to reverse course. Fewer people this year are starting new projects in C++ than last year, and fewer people than that will be starting new projects in C++ next year. And, as the models get really good at porting and the cost (both in terms of tokens and human supervision) comes down, there will be an avalanche of ports from less safe languages to safer languages. This year, maybe next, maybe a year or two after that, is probably the most C++ lines of code in production use there will ever be. Why would one choose C++ for new projects at this point? There are niches where Rust is still uncomfortable or just doesn't have the support, but not for much longer. Models are very good at Rust and good at porting to Rust. And, Rust is a good language for models because it is so strict...it helps keep them in line.

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npalli an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If no one is reading or writing Rust code at that point, it all being agent driven, Rust itself is going to be a very short step before it gets disinter-mediated away and it's English -> complex heterogenous machine code across GPU/TPU/CPU/xPUs. Not sure Rust fans or C++ haters have thought this through.

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tonyhart7 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah, if they can make it work at google scale then no one would absolutely question it anymore