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Migrating away from Rust

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Re: Migrating away from Rust

#441

Post by tptacek »

shmerl wrote: post #351
tptacek wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not at all clear to me what this has to do with the practical delivery of software. In languages that LLMs handle well, with a careful user (ie, not a vibe coder; someone reading every line of output and subjecting most of it to multiple cycles of prompting) the code you end up with is basically indistinguishable from the replacement-level code of an expert in the language. It won't hit that human expert's peaks…

It's not about delivery of software, it's about avoidance of learning based on mediocrity of AI. I.e. original post literally brings LLMs being poor at suggestions for Rust as a reason to avoid it. That implies that proponents of such approach don't want to pursue learning which requires them to do something that exceeds the mediocrity level set by the AI they rely on. For me it's obvious that it has a major negative…

Your premise here being that any software not written in Rust must be mediocre? Wouldn't it be more productive to just figure out how to evolve LLM tooling to work well with Rust? Most people do not write Rust, so this is not a very compelling argument.

Re: Migrating away from Rust

#442

Post by loeg »

trealira wrote: post #365
loeg wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just GC -- performance in general is a total non-issue for a 2d tile-based game. You just don't need the low-level control that Rust or C++ gives you.

I wouldn't say it's a non-issue. I've played 2D tile-based, pixel art games where the framerate dropped noticeably with too many sprites on screen, even though it felt like a 3DS should have been able to run it, and my computer isn't super low-end, either. You have more leeway, but it's possible to badly make optimized 2D games to the point where performance becomes an issue again.

These are gross, macro-level design problems; not the kind of thing where C# vs C++/Rust makes any difference.

Re: Migrating away from Rust

#443

Post by m-schuetz »

Ygg2 wrote: post #439
tacitusarc wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it’s a practicality to simplify pointer arithmetic

Yes but why does no one talk here about fighting the 0 indices. Or how they are switching to Lua, because 0 indices are hard? Am I the only person that remembers how hard it was to wrap your head around numbers starting at 0, rather than 1?

I find indices starting from zero much easier. Especially when index/pointer arithmetic is involved like converting between pixel or voxel indices and coordinates, or indexing in ring buffers. 1-based indexing is one of the reasons I eventuallz abandoned Mathematica, because it got way too cumbersome.

So the reason why you don't see many people fighting 0-indexing is because they actually prefer it.

Re: Migrating away from Rust

#445

Post by scott_w »

Ygg2 wrote: post #439
tacitusarc wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it’s a practicality to simplify pointer arithmetic

Yes but why does no one talk here about fighting the 0 indices. Or how they are switching to Lua, because 0 indices are hard? Am I the only person that remembers how hard it was to wrap your head around numbers starting at 0, rather than 1?

Yes, I think you are. The challenges people describe with Rust look more difficult than remembering to start from 0 instead of 1…

Re: Migrating away from Rust

#446

Post by shmerl »

tptacek wrote: post #441
shmerl wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about delivery of software, it's about avoidance of learning based on mediocrity of AI. I.e. original post literally brings LLMs being poor at suggestions for Rust as a reason to avoid it. That implies that proponents of such approach don't want to pursue learning which requires them to do something that exceeds the mediocrity level set by the AI they rely on. For me it's obvious that it has a major negative…

Your premise here being that any software not written in Rust must be mediocre? Wouldn't it be more productive to just figure out how to evolve LLM tooling to work well with Rust? Most people do not write Rust, so this is not a very compelling argument.

Rust is just an example in this case, not essential to the point. If someone will evolve LLM to work with Rust better, it will still be mediocre at something else, and using this as an excuse to avoid it is problematic in itself, that's what I'm saying.

Basically, learn Rust based on whether it's helping solve your issues better, not on whether some LLM is useless or not useless in this case.

Re: Migrating away from Rust

#447

Post by delusional »

_bin_ wrote: post #297
Animats wrote: post #231

Another failed game project in Rust. This is sad. I've been writing a metaverse client in Rust for almost five years now, which is too long.[1] Someone else set out to do something similar in C#/Unity and had something going in less than two years. This is discouraging. Ecosystem problems: The Rust 3D game dev user base is tiny. Nobody ever wrote an AAA title in Rust. Nobody has really pushed the performance issues.…

I saw a good talk, though I don't remember the name, that went over the array-index approach. It correctly pointed out that by then, you're basically recreating your own pointers without any of the guarantees rust, or even C++ smart pointers, provide.

That sounds like Jonathan blow's "rant" on the subject. You can watch it on YouTube https://youtu.be/4t1K66dMhWk

Re: Migrating away from Rust

#449

Post by littlestymaar »

taylorallred wrote: post #145

I love Rust and wanted to use it for gamedev but I just had to admit to myself that it wasn't a good fit. Rust is a very good choice for user space systems level programming (ie. compilers, proxies, databases etc.). For gamedev, all of the explicitness that Rust requires around ownership/borrowing and types tends to just get in the way and not provide a lot of value. Games should be built to be fast, but the programm…

Bevy solves the ownership/borrowing issues entirely with its ECS design though.

I had two groups students (complete Rust beginners) ship a basic FPS and Tower Defense as learning project using Bevy and their feedback was that they didn't fight the language at all.

The problem that remains is that as soon a you go from a toy game to an actual one, you'd realize that Bevy still has tons of work to do before it can be considered productive.

Re: Migrating away from Rust

#450

Post by littlestymaar »

tptacek wrote: post #155
Bolwin wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a lot worse. A high quality project can have great documentation and guides that make it easy to use for a human, but an LLM won't until there's a lot of code and documents out there using it. And if it's not already popular, that won't happen.

No, this doesn't ring true: long before there were LLMs, people were selecting languages and stacks because of the quality and depth of their community. But also: there is a lot of Rust code out there! And a cubic fuckload of high-quality written material about the language, its idioms, and its libraries, many of which are pretty famous. I don't think this issue is as simple as it's being out to be.

It's not Rust in particular, but Bevy the game engine which is much newer than Rust and still has many breaking changes between version.

It's a bit like Rust in 2014, you would never have had enough material for LLMs to train on.

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