Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

ladybird.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 731 posts

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#381

Post by [deleted] »

klsdjfdlkfjsd wrote: post #286
echelon wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's honest. If we can serialize our ideas to any language for durability, Rust is the way to go. It's not the best tool for the job for a lot of things, but if the LLMs make writing it as fast as anything else - whelp, I can't see any reason not to do it in Rust. If you get any language outputs "for free", Rust is the way to go. I've been using Claude to go ridiculously fast in Rust recently. In the pre-LLM years I…

I'll just stick with C as my lingua franca, and won't be involving Microsoft in my programming life, thanks.

[deleted]

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#382

Post by therein »

grey-area wrote: post #364
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…

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.

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#383

Post by zem »

jsheard wrote: post #292
smartmic wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am somewhat concerned about the volatility. All three languages have their merits and each has a stable foundation that has been developed and established over many years. The fact that the programming language has been “changed” within a short period of time, or rather that the direction has been altered, does not inspire confidence in the overall continuity of Ladybird's design decisions.

> I am somewhat concerned about the volatility. Not just volatility but also flip-flopping. Rust was explicitly a contender when they decided to go with Swift 18 months ago, and they've already done a 180 on it despite the language being more or less the same as it was.

they tried swift, it didn't work, and they figured rust was the best remaining option. that's not "flip-flopping" (by which I assume you mean random indecisiveness that leads to them changing their mind for no reason)

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#384

Post by feverzsj »

nothrows wrote: post #374

This is sort of hilarious if you think about it. The Firefox browser is completely written in Rust. Now Ladybird is a "human-directed ai" Rust browser. Makes you wonder how much of the code the two browsers will share going forward given llm assisted autocompletes will pull from the same Rust Browser dataset.

It's like only 10% of Firefox is rust.

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#385

Post by rovr138 »

Twirrim wrote: post #376
patates wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you're serious or not, but while I never liked Drupal (even used to hate it once upon a time), I always liked the pragmatism surrounding it, reaching to the point of saving php code into the mysql database and executing from there.

> reaching to the point of saving php code into the mysql database and executing from there. Wordpress loves to shove php objects into the database (been a good long while since I used it, don't remember the mechanism, it'd be the equivalent of `pickle` in python, only readable by php). Not sure if they've improved it since I last dealt with it about 15 years ago, but at the time there was no way to have a full separ…

There's implode() and explode() as well as serialize() and unseralize()

No idea what's used in wordpress, but back in D6 and before, it was common to see it when it would store multiple values for an instance.

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#386

Post by jcgrillo »

mghackerlady wrote: post #176
embedding-shape wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, and it's also such a shame that none of the AI companies actually focus on that way of using AI. All of them are moving into the direction of "less human involved and agents do more", while what I really want is better tooling for me to work closer with AI and be better at reviewing/steering it, and be more involved. I don't want "Fire one prompt and get somewhat working code", I want a UX tailored for long se…

I think it was Steve Jobs who said computers should be like a bicycle for the mind, I tend to agree

I love this Jobs quote for two reasons:

(1) It captures the ideal so well

(2) The bitter irony of how thoroughly pre-OS X Macintosh computers failed to live up to it

I feel like there's a similar dichotomy in LLM tools now

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#387

Post by renewiltord »

cardanome wrote: post #235
ramon156 wrote: post #38

I'm a long-time Rust fan and have no idea how to respond. I think I need a lot more info about this migration, especially since Ladybird devs have been very vocal about being "anti-rust" (I guess more anti-hype, where Rust was the hype). I don't know if it's a good fit. Not because they're writing a browser engine in Rust (good), but because Ladybird praises CPP/Swift currently and have no idea what the contributor's…

> I guess more anti-hype, where Rust was the hype Yeah that is the thing I struggle with. I am really happy for people falling in love with Rust. It is a amazing language when used for the right use case. The problem is that had my Rust adventures a few years ago and I am over the hype cycle and able to see both the advantages and disadvantages. Plus being generally older and hopefully wiser I don't tie my identity t…

[flagged]

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#388

Post by cyode »

jp1016 wrote: post #300

The byte-for-byte identical output requirement is the smartest part of this whole thing. You basically get to run the old and new pipelines side by side and diff them, which means any bug in the translation is immediately caught. Way too many rewrites fail because people try to "improve" things during the port and end up chasing phantom bugs that might be in the old code, the new code, or just behavioral differences.…

I hope, with the velocity unlocked by these tools, that more pure ports will become the norm. Before, migrations could be so costly that “improving” things “while I’m here” helped sell doing the migration at all, especially in business settings. Only to lead to more toil chasing those phantom bugs.
Post reply on HN