I'm sorry, but you still have to think
- ID
- 34307
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 11 Oct 2026, 10:29 PM
- Fetched
- 12 Oct 2026, 4:34 AM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://itsallaboutthebit.com/i-am-sorry-but-you-still-have-to-think/
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 8.0
- Created
- 12 Oct 2026, 4:34 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_codersai_agent_userssaas_startup_founders
What happened
Piotr Sarnacki's Oct 11, 2026 post analyzes DHH's AI-agent-assisted rewrite of Campfire Once from Ruby on Rails to Rust, plus later Elixir and Go versions, arguing the results show you still have to read code and think. The rewrites differ on non-functional constraints: the Rust version drops the CSRF token for easier caching and replaces Redis with in-process queues for notifications, while the Elixir version stays closer to Rails; code review finds Elixir processing all SQL queries in a single process and Rust leaving some database operations non-async under a cooperative scheduler. The Hacker News thread drew 211 points and 77 comments.
Why it matters
If you use AI agents to rewrite or scaffold production code, this is a concrete case that vague prompts silently pick architecture and security tradeoffs—backwards compatibility, CSRF/caching, Redis vs in-process queues, async behavior—so you should specify constraints before generation and budget review time for generated code. For Malaysian/SEA SaaS builders trying to cut dev time with agents, the practical takeaway is not to compare language rewrites produced this way as if they were language benchmarks; they are prompt artifacts.
Discussion angle
Use the Rust CSRF/Redis and Elixir single-process SQL examples to ask: what constraints do you put in your AI coding prompt, and what do you still review manually before shipping?