3 ms·

No, that's usually to decrease the number of bugs and vulnerabilities.

by mike_hock 5mo ago

lelanthran 5mo ago
That's not why people rewrite in Rust. Rewrites brings new bugs regardless of the language.
- Matl 5mo ago
  You're conflating why people want to rewrite it in Rust vs what is the likely end result i.e. I do think people want to rewrite things in Rust because they believe long-term it will mean fewer (memory safety etc.) bugs especially because there's been almost no meaningful improvement in this space for a long time. But of course in the short term it will mean regressions compared to the established C written version. That is different from AI where the calculus seems to be that if AI isn't involved, it aien't relevant.
  - lelanthran 5mo ago
    > I do think people want to rewrite things in Rust because they believe long-term it will mean fewer (memory safety etc.) bugs I don't believe that anymore - if that were true, the large portion of code now being rewritten in Rust wouldn't be vibe-coded slop. I'd be more willing to believe that "quality" was the reason if those doing the rewrite weren't fucking vibing everything!
    - Matl 5mo ago
      > if that were true, the large portion of code now being rewritten in Rust wouldn't be vibe-coded slop. There may be some recency bias with the whole Bun fiasco, but Bun is after all owned by Anthorpic. The wast majority of software in Rust that's actually used is not vibe coded as far as I know. There may be a large number of vibe coded Rust projects on GitHub but that's a poor metric to judge by given how easy it is to publish a new repo. Is a large portion of in use Rust code vibecoded? I don't believe so.
reverius42 5mo ago
Does an AI rewrite in Rust cancel out?
- nicoburns 5mo ago
  That remains to be seen, but my guess would be that if you do it like Ladybird (with human-in-the-loop and a decent level of review) then probably yes, if you do it like Bun (1M LoC in a week) then probably no.
- My_Name 5mo ago
  I did recently read an article about how, due to better training data, an AI writes better code in Rust than most other languages. How that translates to the number of bugs, I don't know. I would think that existing bugs would be caught, but new bugs would be introduced. The problem remains, but at least it has a new name now.
  - dnh44 5mo ago
    I’m developing three codebases right now where all of the code is written by AI (Swift, Python, Rust) and the Rust codebase requires the least pruning and has the fewest wtf moments.
  - hazbot 5mo ago
    I suspect it is the feedback from the stricter compiler, not differences in training data between python and rust

No, that's usually to decrease the number of bugs and vulnerabilities.

lelanthran 5mo ago

That's not why people rewrite in Rust. Rewrites brings new bugs regardless of the language.

Matl 5mo ago
You're conflating why people want to rewrite it in Rust vs what is the likely end result i.e. I do think people want to rewrite things in Rust because they believe long-term it will mean fewer (memory safety etc.) bugs especially because there's been almost no meaningful improvement in this space for a long time. But of course in the short term it will mean regressions compared to the established C written version. That is different from AI where the calculus seems to be that if AI isn't involved, it aien't relevant.
- lelanthran 5mo ago
  > I do think people want to rewrite things in Rust because they believe long-term it will mean fewer (memory safety etc.) bugs I don't believe that anymore - if that were true, the large portion of code now being rewritten in Rust wouldn't be vibe-coded slop. I'd be more willing to believe that "quality" was the reason if those doing the rewrite weren't fucking vibing everything!
  - Matl 5mo ago
    > if that were true, the large portion of code now being rewritten in Rust wouldn't be vibe-coded slop. There may be some recency bias with the whole Bun fiasco, but Bun is after all owned by Anthorpic. The wast majority of software in Rust that's actually used is not vibe coded as far as I know. There may be a large number of vibe coded Rust projects on GitHub but that's a poor metric to judge by given how easy it is to publish a new repo. Is a large portion of in use Rust code vibecoded? I don't believe so.

reverius42 5mo ago

Does an AI rewrite in Rust cancel out?

nicoburns 5mo ago
That remains to be seen, but my guess would be that if you do it like Ladybird (with human-in-the-loop and a decent level of review) then probably yes, if you do it like Bun (1M LoC in a week) then probably no.
My_Name 5mo ago
I did recently read an article about how, due to better training data, an AI writes better code in Rust than most other languages. How that translates to the number of bugs, I don't know. I would think that existing bugs would be caught, but new bugs would be introduced. The problem remains, but at least it has a new name now.
- dnh44 5mo ago
  I’m developing three codebases right now where all of the code is written by AI (Swift, Python, Rust) and the Rust codebase requires the least pruning and has the fewest wtf moments.
- hazbot 5mo ago
  I suspect it is the feedback from the stricter compiler, not differences in training data between python and rust