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Linux 0.11 rewritten in idiomatic Rust, boots in QEMU

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Re: Linux 0.11 rewritten in idiomatic Rust, boots in QEMU

#121

Post by eddd-ddde »

skor wrote: post #39
block_dagger wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the opposite feeling; I am liking Rust more and more and thinking most of the world's C code should be rewritten. It seems like a sweet spot of enforced memory safety, performance, and human/agent readability.

why rewrite if you can check for and fix bugs? If you are thinking of AI fixing bugs is less expensive

Because making segfaults impossible is simply a better solution to playing a game of whack a mole of "crash, root cause, fix and add test for that very specific bug"?

Re: Linux 0.11 rewritten in idiomatic Rust, boots in QEMU

#122

Post by wang_li »

kjs3 wrote: post #101
minimaxir wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To paraphrase another comment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48900086 ), this project is fun and fun should be encouraged, as experimentation is what leads to more innovative things. The existence of this project doesn't take away from anything.

I have many times chastised commenters about shitting on other peoples toy/hobby/side projects, but like many others I'm a bit lost on the fun of iterating on "get the Linux 0.whatever source code and rewrite it in rust..." and then crowing "LOOK WHAT I DID!" on HN. If the OP had documented "this is how I prompted the code generating LLM du jour to produce an equivalent to this early Linux kernel, this is the AI work…

I feel like we are past the point where using an AI tool to translate some code, to write some code, to copy some code, is considered interesting or novel.

Re: Linux 0.11 rewritten in idiomatic Rust, boots in QEMU

#123

Post by jmcqk6 »

egorfine wrote: post #107
Aurornis wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is Linux 0.11 from 1991. Someone is having fun with a side experiment that has no practical real-world implications. This stuff is supposed to be fun and we should celebrate when other people are doing fun, pointless things like this. If you're interested then ignore it and move on. There's no need to get involved or comment if a project of no consequence is uninteresting to you personally

Someone recently had a fun side experiment [1] that ended up killing a product. [1] https://bun.sh/blog/bun-in-rust

How did it kill the product? It's still cranking along pretty good.

Re: Linux 0.11 rewritten in idiomatic Rust, boots in QEMU

#124

Post by kreco »

Aurornis wrote: post #50
mjhay wrote: post #19

I used to like rust, but I feel like I’m being Pavlovian-conditioned to recoil at its mention now.

This is Linux 0.11 from 1991. Someone is having fun with a side experiment that has no practical real-world implications. This stuff is supposed to be fun and we should celebrate when other people are doing fun, pointless things like this. If you're interested then ignore it and move on. There's no need to get involved or comment if a project of no consequence is uninteresting to you personally

I find his comment interesting. It's just mundane feedback, but still a feedback.

Likewise, you could ignore his comment but decided to engage.

Re: Linux 0.11 rewritten in idiomatic Rust, boots in QEMU

#125

Post by bergkvist »

anthk wrote: post #91
block_dagger wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the opposite feeling; I am liking Rust more and more and thinking most of the world's C code should be rewritten. It seems like a sweet spot of enforced memory safety, performance, and human/agent readability.

Rust and C++'s overcomplex syntax are a nightmare to maintain and set. Go should have been the C succesor long ago, at least for 64 bit machines. In the end It's from the same people of Unix/C/Plan9, so they know their flaws and reasons. For C++ like performance, sadly there's nothing close to Rust, but Zig and Nim can be close and good enough. Inb4 "mah objects", just use Java or C# and forget C++ forever for OOP pr…

Golang is not a replacement for C. It is a much higher level language, which doesn't play well with systems programming/embedded development etc.

Re: Linux 0.11 rewritten in idiomatic Rust, boots in QEMU

#126

Post by 0x262d »

kjs3 wrote: post #101
minimaxir wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To paraphrase another comment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48900086 ), this project is fun and fun should be encouraged, as experimentation is what leads to more innovative things. The existence of this project doesn't take away from anything.

I have many times chastised commenters about shitting on other peoples toy/hobby/side projects, but like many others I'm a bit lost on the fun of iterating on "get the Linux 0.whatever source code and rewrite it in rust..." and then crowing "LOOK WHAT I DID!" on HN. If the OP had documented "this is how I prompted the code generating LLM du jour to produce an equivalent to this early Linux kernel, this is the AI work…

just putting "rewritten by AI" in the headline would prevent the missed expectation feeling I got from clicking into it. but it would also sound less cool and probably get fewer upvotes, so...

Re: Linux 0.11 rewritten in idiomatic Rust, boots in QEMU

#127

Post by minimaxir »

otterley wrote: post #115
minimaxir wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memory bugs are unknown unknowns that AI may or may not catch. There's net-present-value in switching to a language where certain types of memory bugs are impossible.

On the contrary, AI agents are doing an outstanding job of catching and fixing them. The jury's still out on the cost-to-value ratio of improving existing code vs. rewriting it.

Those memory bugs tend to be known unknowns. It's the unknown unknowns that are really scary.

Re: Linux 0.11 rewritten in idiomatic Rust, boots in QEMU

#129

Post by trollbridge »

broodbucket wrote: post #104
trollbridge wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish people who do this stuff could at least write their own docs.

I can't help but glaze over any AI written documentation. If it wasn't worth the time to write then it's surely not going to be worth the time to read

In our internal repos, I carefully mark out AI generated stuff versus human generated stuff. Of course, the AI generated stuff is often excellent, but its main purpose is to be there to prompt some AI in the future of what to do.

Re: Linux 0.11 rewritten in idiomatic Rust, boots in QEMU

#130

Post by overfeed »

Tade0 wrote: post #99
IshKebab wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty much the standard target for slop now, so now "in Rust" kind of implies "I just pointed Claude at it and have no idea if the result is any good, also it's an abandoned project." Tbh I think Rust is popular and mainstream enough that it doesn't matter too much. There are still plenty of great Rust projects out there.

Truly, is that Rust's fault that sloppers are targeting it? Personally I'm becoming increasingly disillusioned with current LLMs' capabilities. All those recent high profile "rewrites" turned out to be transliterations to unsafe Rust. I could rewrite anything in unsafe Rust like right now, despite being a novice in the language.

> Truly, is that Rust's fault that sloppers are targeting it?

The "Rewrite it in Rust!", all gas, no brakes zealotry predates LLM coding agents. When you dismiss the trade-offs with no consideration, and abide no questions about the possible cost of the "one true $X", you're practicing religion, not engineering. What has changed is the zealots no longer restricted to demanding that other people adapt their preferred language, but can now automate forking projects into their ideal language. I'm hoping the next shoe to drop is the realization that the language is a small part of a projects success, when it's time to maintain their forks.

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