4 ms·

He Rewrote Everything in Rust – Then We Got Fired

15 points by wallflower 1y ago

drewbitt 1y ago
The detached, analytical tone (despite this supposedly happening to them), the simple character tropes, and obvious 'deeper message' are clear signs this is just a fable.
- lordmauve 1y ago
  It's written by AI. I have made LLMs adopt the same tone by prompting to be engaging. Short sentences. Every point intended to land with impact. Artificial gravitas. I consider that a failed experiment and rewrote it, rather than posting to Medium
  - mcphage 1y ago
    You can get LLMs to write in that tone, because it’s a common tone that people write in. Especially for LinkedIn and MBA essays.
- reverius42 1y ago
  I was half expecting it to end with "And Kabir's real name was Anthropic's Claude Code."
  - sshine 1y ago
    Kabir Kode, please.
- sigmoid10 1y ago
  This is basically the average rustacean's wet dream. But I can probably point out half a dozen reasons (without even thinking) why this wouldn't work in a realistic environment. Unless that one guy is literally a savant and the others are negative net contribution random monkey devs who were twiddling their thumbs all day at best. And in that case the end result would probably be the same, it has nothing to do with the specifics of this story.
khedoros1 1y ago
And the company now has a bus-factor of 1.
- Ygg2 1y ago
  If it's true.
  - nicce 1y ago
    The story is entirely believable but would the guy who lost their job to write it like this? That is rare.
    - Ygg2 1y ago
      The story is too simple and unbelievable. It feels almost like a fable.
- bravesoul2 1y ago
  A rust-factor of 1 too
  - sshine 1y ago
    I've personally experienced how a Rust-factor of 1 can damn a project and a company's buy-in into Rust. Like any technological investment, Rust has risk because you depend on people who know Rust. There's plenty of people, internationally. But locally at the required level, not always.
- coldtea 1y ago
  It's a bullshit slop story. But even if true, that's trivial to change hiring another dev (or Rust dev specifically) and giving it a couple of months to understand the architecture.
  - nicce 1y ago
    Statistically speaking, it is more difficult to hire Rust dev, especially with identical wage.
axpvms 1y ago
and then the whole company clapped
- ccppurcell 1y ago
  They literally do clap at some point in the story!
MonkeyClub 1y ago
https://archive.is/5Lsle https://archive.is/5Lsle
zhaohu 1y ago
[dead]
bravesoul2 1y ago
Replaced by a health check! Anyway nice LLM drivel with whatever the standard linkedin system message is.
- fartfeatures 1y ago
  This is not just LLM drivel — It is drive by LLM drivel.
conaclos 1y ago
> Rust didn’t fire us. But a Rust rewrite without team buy-in can change who the team even is. Perhaps the most valuable paragraph of this sad story.
Rikudou 1y ago
Can people not use Medium? I'm not making an account just so I can read something.
- fmajid 1y ago
  Add https://archive.ph/ https://archive.ph/ before the URL and it will strip the paywall. But better to shun people who use Medium altogether.
  - sshine 1y ago
    As long as sneaking "archive.is/" (many mirrors exist) in after "https:// https://" and it works, I'm not going to object. But I often do just click back because the effort of doing that outweighs the value of reading. What a first-world problem.
- aPoCoMiLogin 1y ago
  prepend medium url with https://freedium.cfd/<medium_url> https://freedium.cfd/<medium_url>
nvader 1y ago
This is slop. It has all the signs, and there are enough yellow flags that I'm not even sure this is real and not some weird fiction.
KaiserPro 1y ago
Don't get me wrong, its plausible, but like why was this one guy able to replace everyone? yes he was faster and junk, but like what the fuck were all of you doing? How was he able to replace an entire stack in less than a month without introducing huge amounts of logical errors? The "healthcheck" that is provided is just junk. It gives you app uptime, great, but that's _useless_ without context. Oh its neat, but also fucking pointless. I'm not a node person, but you can write the same thing is ~12 lines of node. Is this AI slop with some rage bait sprinkled in?
- sshine 1y ago
  > what the fuck were all of you doing? Hotfixing fires caused by brittle software, causing more brittle software. > How was he able to replace an entire stack in less than a month There weren't hundreds of thousands of lines of code. The conceptual model was already mature and well-understood. So there was little new understanding to be gained, only fixing bugs in a second iteration. > without introducing huge amounts of logical errors? Supposedly by being a good engineer who tests things against the existing solution and new tests. > The "healthcheck" that is provided is just junk Yes, the whole story seems made up. A moral of the story may be: Build huts with mud, and skyscrapers with steel. There are so many historical precedents to suggest that rewriting anything from scratch is extremely risky. This story, while it may be fake, suggests that you shouldn't altogether abandon the idea and live in mediocrity. As a person without a huge amount of legacy risk on my shoulders, I like that.
- mingus88 1y ago
  I didn’t read the whole thing because login but yes, firing the whole team thanks to one rockstar is the most braindead bit of management I have ever heard Let’s say it’s easy to replace those people with Rust engineers (it isn’t) Lets say there were no critical bugs introduced in a total rewrite (there almost certainly were) Let’s say that morale among the rest of the org won’t instantly nosedive because a whole team got canned over architecture decisions they had no part in (it will) Are we to believe that this unicorn 10x Rust engineer wont instantly be bored out of their skull because now that the team is gone there is no one left to maintain the devops pipelines, write all the docs and runbooks, and all that tedious stuff that any regular team handles? How long until this rockstar unicorn ninja bails for another fun Rust from scratch project elsewhere?

15 points by wallflower 1y ago

The detached, analytical tone (despite this supposedly happening to them), the simple character tropes, and obvious 'deeper message' are clear signs this is just a fable.

lordmauve 1y ago
It's written by AI. I have made LLMs adopt the same tone by prompting to be engaging. Short sentences. Every point intended to land with impact. Artificial gravitas. I consider that a failed experiment and rewrote it, rather than posting to Medium
- mcphage 1y ago
  You can get LLMs to write in that tone, because it’s a common tone that people write in. Especially for LinkedIn and MBA essays.
reverius42 1y ago
I was half expecting it to end with "And Kabir's real name was Anthropic's Claude Code."
- sshine 1y ago
  Kabir Kode, please.
sigmoid10 1y ago
This is basically the average rustacean's wet dream. But I can probably point out half a dozen reasons (without even thinking) why this wouldn't work in a realistic environment. Unless that one guy is literally a savant and the others are negative net contribution random monkey devs who were twiddling their thumbs all day at best. And in that case the end result would probably be the same, it has nothing to do with the specifics of this story.

khedoros1 1y ago

And the company now has a bus-factor of 1.

Ygg2 1y ago
If it's true.
- nicce 1y ago
  The story is entirely believable but would the guy who lost their job to write it like this? That is rare.
  - Ygg2 1y ago
    The story is too simple and unbelievable. It feels almost like a fable.
bravesoul2 1y ago
A rust-factor of 1 too
- sshine 1y ago
  I've personally experienced how a Rust-factor of 1 can damn a project and a company's buy-in into Rust. Like any technological investment, Rust has risk because you depend on people who know Rust. There's plenty of people, internationally. But locally at the required level, not always.
coldtea 1y ago
It's a bullshit slop story. But even if true, that's trivial to change hiring another dev (or Rust dev specifically) and giving it a couple of months to understand the architecture.
- nicce 1y ago
  Statistically speaking, it is more difficult to hire Rust dev, especially with identical wage.

axpvms 1y ago

and then the whole company clapped

ccppurcell 1y ago
They literally do clap at some point in the story!

MonkeyClub 1y ago

https://archive.is/5Lsle https://archive.is/5Lsle

zhaohu 1y ago

[dead]

bravesoul2 1y ago

Replaced by a health check! Anyway nice LLM drivel with whatever the standard linkedin system message is.

fartfeatures 1y ago
This is not just LLM drivel — It is drive by LLM drivel.

conaclos 1y ago

> Rust didn’t fire us. But a Rust rewrite without team buy-in can change who the team even is. Perhaps the most valuable paragraph of this sad story.

Rikudou 1y ago

Can people not use Medium? I'm not making an account just so I can read something.

fmajid 1y ago
Add https://archive.ph/ https://archive.ph/ before the URL and it will strip the paywall. But better to shun people who use Medium altogether.
- sshine 1y ago
  As long as sneaking "archive.is/" (many mirrors exist) in after "https:// https://" and it works, I'm not going to object. But I often do just click back because the effort of doing that outweighs the value of reading. What a first-world problem.
aPoCoMiLogin 1y ago
prepend medium url with https://freedium.cfd/<medium_url> https://freedium.cfd/<medium_url>

nvader 1y ago

This is slop. It has all the signs, and there are enough yellow flags that I'm not even sure this is real and not some weird fiction.

KaiserPro 1y ago

Don't get me wrong, its plausible, but like why was this one guy able to replace everyone? yes he was faster and junk, but like what the fuck were all of you doing? How was he able to replace an entire stack in less than a month without introducing huge amounts of logical errors? The "healthcheck" that is provided is just junk. It gives you app uptime, great, but that's _useless_ without context. Oh its neat, but also fucking pointless. I'm not a node person, but you can write the same thing is ~12 lines of node. Is this AI slop with some rage bait sprinkled in?

sshine 1y ago
> what the fuck were all of you doing? Hotfixing fires caused by brittle software, causing more brittle software. > How was he able to replace an entire stack in less than a month There weren't hundreds of thousands of lines of code. The conceptual model was already mature and well-understood. So there was little new understanding to be gained, only fixing bugs in a second iteration. > without introducing huge amounts of logical errors? Supposedly by being a good engineer who tests things against the existing solution and new tests. > The "healthcheck" that is provided is just junk Yes, the whole story seems made up. A moral of the story may be: Build huts with mud, and skyscrapers with steel. There are so many historical precedents to suggest that rewriting anything from scratch is extremely risky. This story, while it may be fake, suggests that you shouldn't altogether abandon the idea and live in mediocrity. As a person without a huge amount of legacy risk on my shoulders, I like that.
mingus88 1y ago
I didn’t read the whole thing because login but yes, firing the whole team thanks to one rockstar is the most braindead bit of management I have ever heard Let’s say it’s easy to replace those people with Rust engineers (it isn’t) Lets say there were no critical bugs introduced in a total rewrite (there almost certainly were) Let’s say that morale among the rest of the org won’t instantly nosedive because a whole team got canned over architecture decisions they had no part in (it will) Are we to believe that this unicorn 10x Rust engineer wont instantly be bored out of their skull because now that the team is gone there is no one left to maintain the devops pipelines, write all the docs and runbooks, and all that tedious stuff that any regular team handles? How long until this rockstar unicorn ninja bails for another fun Rust from scratch project elsewhere?