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Show HN: I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust

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Re: Show HN: I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust

#361

Post by tapirl »

wiseowise wrote: post #358
tapirl wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never seen any AI system could explain correctly on the following Golang code: package main func alwaysFalse() bool { return false } func main() { switch alwaysFalse() // don't format the code { case true: println("true") case false: println("false") } } > Go community was trained for the longest time not to make backward-incompatible API updates so that helps quite a bit in consistency of dependencies across…

It can easily explain it with a little nudge. Not sure why you feel smug about knowing such a small trivia, ‘gofmt’ would rewrite it to semicolon anyway.

I write code in notebook++ and never format my code. :D

Re: Show HN: I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust

#362

Post by DoesntMatter22 »

stouset wrote: post #321
tgma wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, Go is one of the best LLM targets due to simplicity of the language (no complex reasoning in the type system or borrow checker), a high quality, unified, and language-integrated dependency ecosystem[1] for which source is available, and vast training data. [1]: Specifically, Go community was trained for the longest time not to make backward-incompatible API updates so that helps quite a bit in consi…

I have never understood why people want to use LLMs for programming outside of learning. I have written Perl, C, C#, Rust, and Ruby professionally and to this day I feel like they would slow me down. I have used golang in the past and I was not am still not a fan. But I recently had to break it out for a new project. LLMs actually make golang not a totally miserable experience to write, to the point I’m honestly asto…

This is akin to saying that you prefer a horse to a car because you don't have to buy gas for a horse, it can eat for free so why use it?

Re: Show HN: I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust

#363

Post by EMM_386 »

tapirl wrote: post #301
kristianp wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft rewriting typescript tools in Go and getting a 10x speedup? It's wild that they would choose Go for that. And a surprising level of speedup. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/typescript/typescript-native-...

My surprise is typescipt is so slow. I have never used it yet, but I think will never too.

At the risk of feeling silly for not knowing this ... why is TypeScript considered a programming language, and how can you make it "faster"?

I have used its it came out so I do know what it is, but I have people ask if they should write their new program in TypeScript, thinking this is something they can write it in and then run it.

My usage of it is limited to JavaScript, so I see it as adding a static typing layer to JavaScript, so that development is easier and more logical, and this typing information is stripped out when transpiled, resulting in pure JavaScript which is all the browser understands.

The industry calls it a programming language, so I do too just because this is not some semantic battle I want to get into. But in my mind it's not.

There's probably a word for what it is, I just can't think of it.

Type system?

And I don't understand a "10x speedup" on TypeScript, because it doesn't execute.

I can understand language services for things like VS Code that handle the TypeScript types getting 10x faster, but not TypeScript itself. I assume that is what they are talking about in most cases. But if this logic isn't right, let me know.

Re: Show HN: I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust

#364

Post by Blahah »

tapirl wrote: post #338
bboygravity wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: if you rewrite a Rust app, ANY Rust app and turn it into a perfectly rewritten Electron app, it will 100 percent still be shittier, bigger, slower and eat more RAM and CPU.

Comparing Rust with Electron is so weird. One is a language, the other is a lib/framework.

Tauri is the thing being implicitly compared with electron. Well worth checking out.

Re: Show HN: I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust

#365

Post by dgb23 »

kristianp wrote: post #299
namuol wrote: post #297

Beware the greenfield effect. I don’t want to comment on the technology choices specifically here, but in general the whole “we rewrote our app in X and now it’s better” is essentially a fact of life no matter the tech choices, at least for the first big rewrite. First, you’re going to make better technical choices overall. You know much better where the problems lie. Second, you’re rarely going to want to port over…

Microsoft rewriting typescript tools in Go and getting a 10x speedup? It's wild that they would choose Go for that. And a surprising level of speedup. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/typescript/typescript-native-...

It doesn't surprise me at all.

Idiomatic Go leans on value types, simple loops and conditionals, gives you just enough tools to avoid unnecessary allocations, doesn't default to passing around pointers for everything, gives you more control over memory layout.

JS runtimes have to do a lot of work in order to spit out efficient code. It also requires more specialized knowledge from programmers to write fast JS.

I think esbuild and hugo are two programs that showcase this pretty well. Esbuild specifically made a splash in the JS world.

Re: Show HN: I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust

#366

Post by stevekemp »

tgma wrote: post #340
stouset wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now they are fancy autocompletes. That is enormously useful for a language where 90% of the typing is boilerplate in desperate need of autocompletion. Most of the “interesting” logic I write is nowhere close to autocompleted successfully and most of it needs to be thrown out. If you’re spending most of your days writing glue that translates one set of JSON documents or HTTP requests into another I’m sure they’r…

I don't know which models you are using, but in my experience they have been way more than fancy autocomplete today. I have had thousand line programs written and refined with just a few prompts. On the analysis and code review side, they have been even more impressive, finding issues and potential impacts of changes and describing the intent behind the code. I implore you to revisit good models like Gemini 2.5 Pro.…

It comes back to the nature of the work; I've got a hobby project which is basically an emulator of CP/M, a system from the 70s, and there is a bug in it.

My emulator runs BBC Basic, Zork, Turbo Pascal, etc, etc, but when it is used to run a vintage C compiler from the 80s it gives the wrong results.

Can an LLM help me identify the source of this bug? No. Can I say "fix it"? No. In the past I said "Write a test-case for this CP/M BDOS function, in the same style as the existing tests" and it said "Nope" and hallucinated functions in my codebase which it tried to call.

Basically if I use an LLM as an auto-completer it works slightly better than my Emacs setup already did, but anything more than that, for me, fails and worse still fails in a way that eats my time.

Re: Show HN: I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust

#367

Post by Sammi »

encom wrote: post #341
ctxc wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is akin to saying if you rewrite it in Assembly it would be better than Rust. True, but what are the tradeoffs? Why doesn't everyone write it in assembly? It _would_ be bigger and eat more RAM and CPU. But that does not imply "shittier". There are parameters like dev time, skills available in the market, familiarity, the JS ecosystem etc that sometimes outweigh the disadvantage of being bigger/slower. You're poi…

All those parameters mentioned are exclusively for developers. End users don't care and will get a worse product when you choose Electron instead of doing it properly.

End users care that they get a product at all. Which they won't if it's too costly to make. There is a balance that is appropriate for each project. Or else we should all be writing machine code by hand.

Re: Show HN: I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust

#368

Post by Arch485 »

ctxc wrote: post #332
bboygravity wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: if you rewrite a Rust app, ANY Rust app and turn it into a perfectly rewritten Electron app, it will 100 percent still be shittier, bigger, slower and eat more RAM and CPU.

This is akin to saying if you rewrite it in Assembly it would be better than Rust. True, but what are the tradeoffs? Why doesn't everyone write it in assembly? It _would_ be bigger and eat more RAM and CPU. But that does not imply "shittier". There are parameters like dev time, skills available in the market, familiarity, the JS ecosystem etc that sometimes outweigh the disadvantage of being bigger/slower. You're poi…

This is something I think a lot of people miss about Rust - outside of slow compile times and personal preference, there is no reason not to choose Rust over JavaScript/TypeScript (unless of course you're working in the browser). It does everything JavaScript can do, but it does it faster and with more stability. At the end of the day, these features pay out huge dividends.

And this isn't Rust zealotry! I think this goes for any memory-safe AoT language that has a good ecosystem (e.g. Go or C#): why use JavaScript when other languages do it better?

Re: Show HN: I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust

#369

Post by sedatk »

fkyoureadthedoc wrote: post #200
_bent wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah slint, which is most similar to Qt see https://www.boringcactus.com/2025/04/13/2025-survey-of-rust-...

lol when you click through to this site from HN it redirects to https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Human_fa... if you open in new tab or copy/paste in new tab it does not.

Funny for sure, but not novel. JWZ also doesn't let his web site linked from HN. Example link (that only works properly when you copy paste, opinionated rejection otherwise): https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/06/mozillas-original-sin/

Re: Show HN: I rewrote my Mac Electron app in Rust

#370

Post by codr7 »

Arch485 wrote: post #368
ctxc wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is akin to saying if you rewrite it in Assembly it would be better than Rust. True, but what are the tradeoffs? Why doesn't everyone write it in assembly? It _would_ be bigger and eat more RAM and CPU. But that does not imply "shittier". There are parameters like dev time, skills available in the market, familiarity, the JS ecosystem etc that sometimes outweigh the disadvantage of being bigger/slower. You're poi…

This is something I think a lot of people miss about Rust - outside of slow compile times and personal preference, there is no reason not to choose Rust over JavaScript/TypeScript (unless of course you're working in the browser). It does everything JavaScript can do, but it does it faster and with more stability. At the end of the day, these features pay out huge dividends. And this isn't Rust zealotry! I think this…

Rust's type system gymnastics compared to most languages goes quite a bit beyond preference. I can't see the overlap at all with dynamic scripting languages, two completely different tools for completely different problems.
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