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Comment by tstack

2 days ago

> You just got a tiny taste of what Rust enthusiasts have been doing to every C++ related submission

Which is what C++ enthusiasts have done to C enthusiasts and C enthusiasts have done to assembly enthusiasts.

33 comments

tstack

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bch  2 days ago

If people would just take the time to actually learn and appreciate the Analytical Engine they could bypass _all_ that noise...

echelon  2 days ago

Now that LLMs are writing 300% of the code, it makes sense to do it in the safest language, not the most human friendly one.

I suspect that Rust will start taking over as a dominant LLM output language.

I also suspect that in short order we'll have entirely new languages that are engineered to be ideal languages for LLMs to generate. Perhaps even safer than Rust.

The models are shockingly good at writing Rust. You don't even need to have familiarity with Rust to start using it now. You'll learn the language as you interact with the LLMs.

  • adrian_b  2 days ago

    Rust is one of the safer languages, but saying that it is "the safest language" is just a baseless exaggeration.

    Decades before Rust and long before the simplified language that was C, there were safe programming languages, where all invalid operations, numeric overflows or out-of-bounds accesses generated exceptions and where use-after-free was impossible, because either garbage collectors or reference counts were used.

    Rust is much safer than C compiled with its bad default compilation options, but it did not bring much in comparison with other languages.

    Even in C++, with appropriate rules, restrictions and discipline you can write programs that are guaranteed to be at least as safe as any Rust program, but unfortunately very few use C++ in this way, i.e. by strictly avoiding the features that are obsolete or unsafe.

    • vkazanov  2 days ago

      I am not a huge Rust fan but the language did bring a few practical and useful innovations, while also keeping a focus on practice.

      And no, C++ just doesn't make the same things easy or clean.

      And no, "discipline and appropriate rules" were never enough.

      7 replies →

    • dbdr  2 days ago

      > Even in C++, with appropriate rules, restrictions and discipline you can write programs that are guaranteed to be at least as safe as any Rust program

      If by discipline, you mean running something akin to the borrow checker in your head, that's essentially tautologically true. The issue with that is that it's mentally draining and/or you will still make mistakes sometimes.

      2 replies →

  • mchaver  2 days ago

    > I suspect that Rust will start taking over as a dominant LLM output language.

    I doubt it. I think most people will become more entrenched in their favored ecosystem.

    > I also suspect that in short order we'll have entirely new languages that are engineered to be ideal languages for LLMs to generate.

    This is already happening. A couple months ago I came across this language that is engineered for AI and human consumption https://www.moonbitlang.com/

  • jes5199  2 days ago

    I tried that, but the Rust build process was too painful, and agents seemed to burn a lot of tokens guessing how to get the code to compile. I rewrote my project in Elixir and it’s been going much more smoothly

  • rustystump  2 days ago

    Rust will never be the dominant output by a country mile. It will be python and typescript.

  • LtWorf  1 day ago

    You mean ADA? I'd agree, at least gcc can compile it so it's not limited to the very few architectures that rust supports.

    • swiftcoder  1 day ago

      > not limited to the very few architectures that rust supports

      Of all the complaints about rust, this strikes me as one of weirdest. How much code do you actually write for architectures outside the Tier 3 support list?

      2 replies →