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My AI-built PHP engine in Rust passes 17% of PHP-src tests, renders WordPress

ekinertac.com

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Re: My AI-built PHP engine in Rust passes 17% of PHP-src tests, renders WordPress

#11

Post by ShinyLeftPad »

bbg2401 wrote: post #7
ekinertac wrote: post #2

Author here. To be upfront about what this is: I'm not a Rust developer or a PHP internals person. This is an experiment in whether the "point the AI at the original project's test suite" methodology (the way Bun was driven against real-world suites) holds up when the human can't review the code. The oracle is php-src's own .phpt corpus, ~22k tests I didn't write. Current honest score: 3,844 passing (17.4%), with a r…

Will you answer questions yourself, or will you simply pass on what your LLM of choice writes for you? Edit: On further inspection, the blog design, the blog build, the blog articles and even the anecdotes used in the articles are entirely Claude generated. Stop being so lazy. Get Claude to do something interesting and use your own intellect to assess and challenge the work in your write up. Or the other way around.…

> will you simply pass on what your LLM of choice writes for you?

But it will be as least 17% correct!

Re: My AI-built PHP engine in Rust passes 17% of PHP-src tests, renders WordPress

#12

Post by malisper »

gamblor956 wrote: post #6

Maybe the takeaway is that 20% is about all the LLM can muster.

> Maybe the takeaway is that 20% is about all the LLM can muster

At this point there's a long list of projects that have used LLMs to rewrite a system in Rust including:

  - Bun (https://github.com/oven-sh/bun/pull/30412)
  - Valkey (https://github.com/ianm199/valdr)
  - Git (https://github.com/gitbutlerapp/grit)
  - Postgres (https://github.com/malisper/pgrust)
With the exception of Bun, these projects were done pre-fable too, so I bet Fable will make these types of rewrites even easier.

Re: My AI-built PHP engine in Rust passes 17% of PHP-src tests, renders WordPress

#13

Post by sshine »

My boss asked me to set up a WordPress for a product landing page.

I naturally won't do this; it's no more than a couple of weeks ago that some SQL injection landed in the search query function of this monstrosity.

WordPress always was and always will be terrible.

So I set up the landing page with a Hugo static site, and I've been vibe-coding a WordPress-like dashboard that operates on git repositories containing Hugo sites.

I call it WorbPress (not released yet), and I'm sure that's what my boss told me to install, or I might've misheard.

And yes, it's written in Rust (with Axum and Alpine.js), because why not?

Re: My AI-built PHP engine in Rust passes 17% of PHP-src tests, renders WordPress

#14

Post by pluc »

ekinertac wrote: post #2

Author here. To be upfront about what this is: I'm not a Rust developer or a PHP internals person. This is an experiment in whether the "point the AI at the original project's test suite" methodology (the way Bun was driven against real-world suites) holds up when the human can't review the code. The oracle is php-src's own .phpt corpus, ~22k tests I didn't write. Current honest score: 3,844 passing (17.4%), with a r…

Compare with FrankenPHP?

Re: My AI-built PHP engine in Rust passes 17% of PHP-src tests, renders WordPress

#15

Post by sdesol »

lawrenceduk wrote: post #5

Is it astonishing you got to 17% with some vibe code? Sure. But most of the stuff I’ve vibe coded this year has been astonishing by 2025’s standards. If you got 100% I’d be genuinely blown away.

The article doesn't go into how they managed the AI context when implementing things but I would not be surprised if it was done in a methodical way, 80% - 90% of the test could have passed.

Re: My AI-built PHP engine in Rust passes 17% of PHP-src tests, renders WordPress

#17

Post by pylua »

lawrenceduk wrote: post #5

Is it astonishing you got to 17% with some vibe code? Sure. But most of the stuff I’ve vibe coded this year has been astonishing by 2025’s standards. If you got 100% I’d be genuinely blown away.

Does anyone know why we write code anymore? Why not pass through to an llm that generates the page on the fly (ssr)?

Is it cost ?

Re: My AI-built PHP engine in Rust passes 17% of PHP-src tests, renders WordPress

#18

Post by is_true »

sshine wrote: post #13

My boss asked me to set up a WordPress for a product landing page. I naturally won't do this; it's no more than a couple of weeks ago that some SQL injection landed in the search query function of this monstrosity. WordPress always was and always will be terrible. So I set up the landing page with a Hugo static site, and I've been vibe-coding a WordPress-like dashboard that operates on git repositories containing Hug…

Why not use headless WordPress?

Re: My AI-built PHP engine in Rust passes 17% of PHP-src tests, renders WordPress

#19

Post by sureglymop »

sshine wrote: post #13

My boss asked me to set up a WordPress for a product landing page. I naturally won't do this; it's no more than a couple of weeks ago that some SQL injection landed in the search query function of this monstrosity. WordPress always was and always will be terrible. So I set up the landing page with a Hugo static site, and I've been vibe-coding a WordPress-like dashboard that operates on git repositories containing Hug…

I feel like not choosing WordPress was a great choice but I'm not sure about the rest of the comment. A simple html file might make for a good landing page though.

Re: My AI-built PHP engine in Rust passes 17% of PHP-src tests, renders WordPress

#20

Post by Jabrov »

pylua wrote: post #17
lawrenceduk wrote: post #5

Is it astonishing you got to 17% with some vibe code? Sure. But most of the stuff I’ve vibe coded this year has been astonishing by 2025’s standards. If you got 100% I’d be genuinely blown away.

Does anyone know why we write code anymore? Why not pass through to an llm that generates the page on the fly (ssr)? Is it cost ?

Yes: cost, speed, and reliability.

But all of those things are improving at shocking speeds, so I think we’re on a path where code is losing value quickly.

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