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Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

ladybird.org

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Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#431

Post by josephg »

9rx wrote: post #276
josephg wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Go is a better Rust. Rust is an ugly version of C++ with longer compile times and a band of zealous missionaries. Eh. There's a lot I like about Go. I adore its compilation speed and the focus on language simplicity. But its got plenty of drawbacks too. Default nullability is a huge mistake. And result types (zig, swift, rust) are way better than go's error handling. Sum types in general are missing from Go, and on…

> Sum types in general are missing from Go Not quite. It doesn't have tagged unions, which is what I expect you are thinking of, but it does have sum types.

Only by abusing interface {}. The result is horrible.

Go doesn’t have sum types as a first class primitive.

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#432

Post by muyuu »

jibal wrote: post #370
muyuu wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's very odd that someone with no experience would take a big project like this and just jump to another language because he trusts the AI generated code of current models if it works it works i guess, but it seems mad to me on the surface

Did you read the OP? No trust, only thorough verification.

I did, and the point stands because reading someone else's code is not the same as writing it, esp. when you're not able to do so to the same standard

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#433

Post by josephg »

nicoburns wrote: post #351
nicoburns wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Compiling stalwart takes about 20 minutes 20 minutes! What hardware is this on? I've worked on Rust projects with similar numbers of dependencies where the compile time (for a clean release build) was 2-4 minutes (on a MacBook M1 Pro)

UPDATE: tried compiling stalwart on my machine, and it took 14 minutes, with a really weird timing profile: - 99% of the ~700 crates were done compiling in about a minute or 2 - RocksDB (a C++ dependency) was 2 minutes by itself - And then it took 10 minutes (ten!) just for the final binary at the end. That's not normal for Rust code at all. Even large ones like Servo or Rustc or Zed. UPDATE2: turns out they have LTO…

Disabling codegen units = 1 speeds up the compilation further. But it’s still too many dependencies and too slow. The binary is pretty huge too.

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#434

Post by josephg »

therein wrote: post #382
grey-area wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, does it look anything like this library? https://docs.rs/jmap-client/latest/jmap_client/

Also curious why would one be proud of having an LLM rewrite something that there is already a library for. I personally feel that proud LLM users boasting sounds as if they are on amphetamines.

It made a webmail client. Not a jmap library.

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#435

Post by mcpar-land »

iamleppert wrote: post #393
kneel25 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re not equal. Humans are capable of actually understanding and looking ahead at consequences of decisions made, whereas an LLM can’t. One is a review, one is mimicking the result of a hypothetical review without any of the actual reasoning. (And prompting itself in a loop is not real reasoning)

I keep hearing people say "but as humans we actually understand". What evidence do you have of the material differences in what understanding an LLM has, and what version a human has? What processes do we fundamentally do, that an LLM does not or cannot do? What here is the definition of "understanding", that, presumably an LLM does not currently do, that humans do?

https://ml-site.cdn-apple.com/papers/the-illusion-of-thinkin...

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#436

Post by josephg »

soperj wrote: post #406
josephg wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 10/10 - would generate tens of thousands of lines of useless code again. Me too! A couple days ago I gave claude the JMAP spec and asked it to write a JMAP based webmail client in rust from scratch. And it did! It burned a mountain of tokens, and its got more than a few bugs. But now I've got my very own email client, powered by the stalwart email server. The rust code compiles into a 2mb wasm bundle that does ever…

Can you release it as open source code?

Sure; I’ll throw it online in a few hours when I’m at my computer.

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#437

Post by srcreigh »

mr_mitm wrote: post #131
josephg wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 10/10 - would generate tens of thousands of lines of useless code again. Me too! A couple days ago I gave claude the JMAP spec and asked it to write a JMAP based webmail client in rust from scratch. And it did! It burned a mountain of tokens, and its got more than a few bugs. But now I've got my very own email client, powered by the stalwart email server. The rust code compiles into a 2mb wasm bundle that does ever…

Same here. I had Claude write me a web based RSS feed reader in Rust. It has some minor glitches I still need to iron out, but it works great, is fast as can be, and is easy on the eyes. https://github.com/AdrianVollmer/FluxFeed

Re "is fast as can be": in my experience generating C/Zig code via Codex, agent generated code is usually several multiples slower than hand optimized code.

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#438

Post by 9rx »

josephg wrote: post #431
9rx wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sum types in general are missing from Go Not quite. It doesn't have tagged unions, which is what I expect you are thinking of, but it does have sum types.

Only by abusing interface {}. The result is horrible. Go doesn’t have sum types as a first class primitive.

Using interface as it was designed to be used offers first-class sum types. Although not all interface use equates to sum types.

But they're not tagged unions. I expect that is still where your confusion lies. Tagged unions and sum types are not equivalent. Tagged unions are a subset of sum types.

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#439

Post by jibal »

muyuu wrote: post #432
jibal wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the OP? No trust, only thorough verification.

I did, and the point stands because reading someone else's code is not the same as writing it, esp. when you're not able to do so to the same standard

Non sequitur. Again, no trust was involved, only verification through extreme testing.

Also, as others have pointed out, "someone with no experience" simply isn't true.

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#440

Post by vovavili »

echelon wrote: post #162
mr_mitm wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I had Claude write me a web based RSS feed reader in Rust. It has some minor glitches I still need to iron out, but it works great, is fast as can be, and is easy on the eyes. https://github.com/AdrianVollmer/FluxFeed

Rust is the final language. Defect free. Immaculate types. Safe. Ergonomic. Beautiful to read. AI is going to be writing a lot of Rust. The final arguments of "rust is hard to write" are going to quiet down. This makes it even more accessible.

I'd say that it's taking much needed steps to achieve perfection but many more steps are there ahead. The next language closer to perfection would definitely have a much gentler introduction curve, among other things.
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