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> There's no way Cloudflare could have pulled this off without next's very own tests. I'm very uncovinced. History showed us very complex systems reverse engin

> There's no way Cloudflare could have pulled this off without next's very own tests. I'm very uncovinced. History showed us very complex systems reverse engineered without access to the source code. With access to the source code, coupled with the rapid iteration of AI, I don't see any real moat here; at best a slight delay.

anematode 8mo ago
Source code is one thing; tests covering the codebase are another. And if you just copy the source code or translate it one-to-one into a new language, rather than make a behavioral copy, there will be copyright issues.
- sealeck 8mo ago
  > there will be copyright issues Next.js is MIT-licensed. Cloudflare's rewrite is... also MIT licensed...
  - anematode 8mo ago
    Of course. I'm referring to rewrites of other software; you can easily launder GPLed code this way, for example.
root_axis 8mo ago
The tests are absolutely essential, otherwise there's no signal to guide the LLM towards correct behavior and hallucinations accumulate until any hope of forward progress collapses.
- falcor84 8mo ago
  Obviously the signal is comparison against the behavior of the original.
seddonm1 8mo ago
I have tried to post this here but it has not got traction. I have a demonstrated process here on my blog (all hand written without AI). This bit about how to brute force decompilation: https://reorchestrate.com/posts/your-binary-is-no-longer-safe-decompilation/ https://reorchestrate.com/posts/your-binary-is-no-longer-saf... And this about how to do the conversion and address the LLM hallucination problem: https://reorchestrate.com/posts/your-binary-is-no-longer-safe-conversion/ https://reorchestrate.com/posts/your-binary-is-no-longer-saf... Yes, it is absolutely possible.
- igravious 8mo ago
  There was a recent post on here where the creator of Ladybird (Andreas Kling) translated a chunk of his novel browser from c++ to Rust in two weeks -- a feat he estimated would take him months: https://ladybird.org/posts/adopting-rust/ https://ladybird.org/posts/adopting-rust/ I, in my own way, have discovered that recent versions of Claude are extremely (as in, super-humanly) good at rewriting or porting. Apparently if recently released coding agents have a predefined target and a good test suite then you can basically tell them that you want X (well-defined target w/ good suite of tests) written in Y (the language/framework you want X written in but it isn't) -- and a week or two later you have a working version. I have spent the last month wrapping my head around the idea that there is a class of tasks in software engineering that is now solved for not very much money at all. More or less every single aspirational idea I have ever had over the last 20 years or so I have begun emabarking on within the last two months. I hear you.
- dunder_cat 8mo ago
  I am curious, have you attempted to do this to any binary packed with commercial obfuscation/"virtualization" schemes (e.g. Orean's Themida/Code Virtualizer and VMProtect)?
  - seddonm1 8mo ago
    No, I would need to find a binary to test on. I suspect it would produce horrible code at the decompiler layer but ultimately I would expect that function signatures are still relatively clean? Its scary - once you get the differential testing harness set up it seems to be just a matter of time/tokens for it to stubbornly work through it.

anematode 8mo ago

Source code is one thing; tests covering the codebase are another. And if you just copy the source code or translate it one-to-one into a new language, rather than make a behavioral copy, there will be copyright issues.

sealeck 8mo ago
> there will be copyright issues Next.js is MIT-licensed. Cloudflare's rewrite is... also MIT licensed...
- anematode 8mo ago
  Of course. I'm referring to rewrites of other software; you can easily launder GPLed code this way, for example.

root_axis 8mo ago

The tests are absolutely essential, otherwise there's no signal to guide the LLM towards correct behavior and hallucinations accumulate until any hope of forward progress collapses.

falcor84 8mo ago
Obviously the signal is comparison against the behavior of the original.

seddonm1 8mo ago

I have tried to post this here but it has not got traction. I have a demonstrated process here on my blog (all hand written without AI). This bit about how to brute force decompilation: https://reorchestrate.com/posts/your-binary-is-no-longer-safe-decompilation/ https://reorchestrate.com/posts/your-binary-is-no-longer-saf... And this about how to do the conversion and address the LLM hallucination problem: https://reorchestrate.com/posts/your-binary-is-no-longer-safe-conversion/ https://reorchestrate.com/posts/your-binary-is-no-longer-saf... Yes, it is absolutely possible.

igravious 8mo ago
There was a recent post on here where the creator of Ladybird (Andreas Kling) translated a chunk of his novel browser from c++ to Rust in two weeks -- a feat he estimated would take him months: https://ladybird.org/posts/adopting-rust/ https://ladybird.org/posts/adopting-rust/ I, in my own way, have discovered that recent versions of Claude are extremely (as in, super-humanly) good at rewriting or porting. Apparently if recently released coding agents have a predefined target and a good test suite then you can basically tell them that you want X (well-defined target w/ good suite of tests) written in Y (the language/framework you want X written in but it isn't) -- and a week or two later you have a working version. I have spent the last month wrapping my head around the idea that there is a class of tasks in software engineering that is now solved for not very much money at all. More or less every single aspirational idea I have ever had over the last 20 years or so I have begun emabarking on within the last two months. I hear you.
dunder_cat 8mo ago
I am curious, have you attempted to do this to any binary packed with commercial obfuscation/"virtualization" schemes (e.g. Orean's Themida/Code Virtualizer and VMProtect)?
- seddonm1 8mo ago
  No, I would need to find a binary to test on. I suspect it would produce horrible code at the decompiler layer but ultimately I would expect that function signatures are still relatively clean? Its scary - once you get the differential testing harness set up it seems to be just a matter of time/tokens for it to stubbornly work through it.