Rewrite it in Rust

Generating code in a new language has become cheap, especially when based on an existing implementation. Providing all that was provided by the old code is very costly to reproduce: stable behavior, battle-hardened code that won't require debugging at three in the morning, all those little edge cases, and developers who are highly familiar with the existing code.

A Rust component I wrote at Redis serves as an example. Even though this was done before AI coding took over, the rewrite itself was not the only challenge: the ecosystem under it kept moving for months while the code above it had to keep running. A coding agent shortens none of that.

I help you work out the cost of the parts an agent cannot help with. What does the new language's ecosystem give you today, and what will you have to build yourself? How does the artifact build and ship, and who is on call for it? That cost is central to making the whole decision, and it is rarely the part anyone was arguing about.

I also look for a boundary where you can start with one component, and answer those questions in production, at small scale.