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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

#461

Post by ignoramous »

anon-3988 wrote: post #145
pjmlp wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I am on the provocative side that as AI tooling matures current programming languages will slowly become irrelevant. I am already using low code tooling with agents for some projects, in iPaaS products.

> Well, I am on the provocative side that as AI tooling matures current programming languages will slowly become irrelevant. I have the opposite opinion. As LLM become ubiquitous and code generation becomes cheap, the choice of language becomes more important. The problem with LLM for me is that it is now possible to write anything using only assembly. While technically possible, who can possibly read and understand…

> As LLM become ubiquitous and code generation becomes cheap, the choice of language becomes more important.

I think, changes to languages/tooling to accomodate Agentic loops will become important.

> All of this assume that you care even a tiny bit about what is happening in your code. If you don't...

I mean, as software engineers, we most certainly do. I suspect there'll be a new class of "developers" who will have their own way of making software, dealing with bugs, building debugging tools that suit their SDLC etc. LLMs will be to software development what Relativity was to Astrophysics, imo: A fundamental & permanent shift.

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#462

Post by shevy-java »

accelbred wrote: post #446
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…

Its possible to dislike Rust but pragmatically use it. Personally, I do not like Rust, but it is the best available choice for some work and personal stuff.

I think this is a good, realistic point of view.

Personally I think most programming languages have really ... huge problems. And the languages that are more fun to use, ruby or python, are slow. I wonder if we could have a great, effective, elegant language that is also slow. All that try end up with e. g. with a C++ like language.

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#463

Post by rzerowan »

LeFantome wrote: post #425
aero-glide2 wrote: post #11

Sigh agents keep killing all the passion I have for programming. It can do things way faster than me, and better than me in some cases. Soon it will do everything better and faster than me.

> Soon it will do everything better and faster than me There is no evidence of that coming from this post. The work was highly directly by an extremely skilled engineer. As he points out, it was small chunks. What chunks and in what order were his decision. Is AI re-writing those chunks much faster than he could. Yes. Very much so. Is it doing it better? Probably not. So, it is mostly just faster when you are very sp…

Id put it as a example of a carpenter preparing their material with a lathe and circular saw vs one working with a handsaw and chisel.

Both will get a skilled craftsman to the point where thie output is a quality piece of work. Using the autotoools to prepare the inputs allows velocity and consistency.

Main issue is the hype and skiddies who would say - feed this tree into a machine and get a cabinet.Producing non-detrministic outputs with the operator being unable to adjust requirements on the fly or even stray from patterns/designs that havent been trained yet.

The tools have limitiations and the operators as well , and the hype does adisservice to what would be establishing reasonable patterns of usage and best practices.

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#464

Post by shevy-java »

thrdbndndn wrote: post #247
throwaway2037 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point. What does Ladybird need to achieve in your opinion to shake the "hype" label? Honestly, I, myself, don't have a good answer!

To me, a project's "hype-ness" is the ratio of how much attention it gets over how useful it actually is to users. As a browser, Ladybird usefulness is currently quite limited for obvious reasons. This is not meant to dismiss its achievements, nor to overlook the fact that building a truly useful browser for everyday users is something few open source teams can accomplish without the backing of a billion dollar compa…

Good verdict. I agree.

Ladybird will have to deliver eventually - on this part I think many people agree with.

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#465

Post by JoshTriplett »

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.

> Rust is the final language.

> Defect free.

I am an upstream developer on the Rust Project (lang, library, cargo, others), and obviously a big fan of Rust. This kind of advocacy doesn't help us, and in fact makes our jobs harder, because for some people this kind of advocacy is their main experience of people they assume are representative of Rust. Please take it down a notch.

I think Rust is the best available language for many kinds of problems. Not yet all, but we're always improving it to try to work for more people. It gets better over time. I'd certainly never call it, or almost any other software, "defect free".

And I'd never call it "the final language"; we're building it to last the test of time, and we hope things like the edition system mean that the successor to Rust is a future version of Rust, but things can always change, and we're not the only source of great ideas.

If you genuinely care about Rust, please adjust your advocacy of Rust to avoid hurting Rust and generating negative perceptions of Rust.

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#466

Post by JoshTriplett »

0x457 wrote: post #451
hathawsh wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Rust is excellent, you must acknowledge that Rust has issues with compilation time. It also has a steep learning curve (especially around lifetimes.) It's much too early to say Rust is the "final" language, especially since AI is driving a huge shift in thinking right now. I used to think that I would never write C code again, but when I decided recently to build something that would run on ESP32 chips, I reali…

If you're programming for ESP, then embassy is the way to go in most cases. You don't need to learn much about lifetimes in most of the application code. Steep learning curve people refer it is "thing blow up at compile time vs runtime." It's easy to write JS or C that passes all tests and compiles and then wonderful blows up when you start using it. It just forces you to learn things you need to know at IMO right no…

> My biggest problem with rust right now is enormous target/ dirs.

We're working on that and it should get better soonish. We're working on shared caches, as well as pruning of old cached builds of dependencies that are unlikely to be reused in a future build.

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#467

Post by 0x457 »

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.

I guess they bet on Swift being more than Apple's blessed way of writing UI software.

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#468

Post by JetSetIlly »

embedding-shape wrote: post #29
skerit wrote: post #15

> I used Claude Code and Codex for the translation. This was human-directed, not autonomous code generation. I decided what to port, in what order, and what the Rust code should look like. It was hundreds of small prompts, steering the agents where things needed to go. After the initial translation, I ran multiple passes of adversarial review, asking different models to analyze the code for mistakes and bad patterns.…

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…

"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 want less ambitious LLM powered tools than what's being offered. For example, I'd love a tool that can analyse whether comments have been kept up to date with the code they refer to. I don't want it to change anything I just want it to tell me of any problems. A linter basically. I imagine LLMs would be a good foundation for this.

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#469

Post by estebank »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #465
echelon wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Rust is the final language. > Defect free. I am an upstream developer on the Rust Project (lang, library, cargo, others), and obviously a big fan of Rust. This kind of advocacy doesn't help us, and in fact makes our jobs harder , because for some people this kind of advocacy is their main experience of people they assume are representative of Rust. Please take it down a notch. I think Rust is the best available lan…

As a member of t-compiler, seconded.

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#470

Post by 0x457 »

swiftcoder wrote: post #421
gostsamo wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because let's say 150 contributors might not be okay with the decision and leave. hard to lead from the front if there is nobody behind to be lead.

To be fair, any of them who didn't leave in the last few controversies probably won't leave over this.

"I can excuse foaming over pronouns and master branch, but I draw a line at using rust" Would not be surprised by that opinion.
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