September 29, 2026
Switch languages without manual rewrites: Campfire’s Rust code became 6 times more verbose
On Sep 29, David Heinemeier Hansson launched a Rust rewrite of Campfire in beta. He says the conversion came at no cost, even though the code is six times longer and he never looked at the Rust code itself.
ThePrimeagen
@theprimeagen
Honestly, if the LLM revolution means we end up with functional, lean software, I'll be happy. Tired of TypeScript constantly getting bloated.
DHH @dhh
Been running a beta version of Campfire rewritten in Rust today! The code itself is still ugly as sin, and 6x as verbose, but the conversion was free*, and I never had to look at the Rust directly, so this is awesome 🤩 https://github.com/basecamp/once-campfire-rust
· 12.2K views
Moving to another language used to mean manually untangling a new codebase. Hansson calls the code "ugly" and six times more verbose, but in his experience the cost of migration dropped to zero.
Campfire's beta will show whether a free migration can become a product that is easy to maintain.
