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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

#711

Post by riku_iki »

IshKebab wrote: post #686
riku_iki wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn't it be better to decide on a memory-safe language, it is totally possible to use some strict subset of C++, which will be memory safe.

Only in theory. In practice it never happens like that. I mean, you think Google wouldn't use that for Chrome if they could?

google is giant and chaotic, and chrome likely is spagetti code mess. Its hard to tell if their approach is reasonable and fully implemented without digging deep.

I work on such project, where we use simplified C++, and it works fine, no memory corruptions in my experience.

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#712

Post by rq1 »

surajrmal wrote: post #710
rq1 wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would say modern c++ written by someone already familiar with rust will probably be structured in a way that's extremely easy to port because you end up modeling the borrow checker in your brain. I can't stress out how much important this sentence is. I would even remove the "familiar with rust" part. Anyone who still thinks it's good to use C/CPP on modern hardware where Rust support is available and good: pleas…

The reason folks still use c/c++ is because of ecosystem. Chances are you have a lot of code you depend on and don't have straightforward ways to port it (and all the transitive deps). Especially in the case of larger enterprise software where there are 10s of millions of lines keeping you entrenched. Foundational things like your threading model, async executor, etc can make it difficult. If you're operating in a mi…

I assumed new projects but I just realised that I didn’t write it.

But still disagree: we have cbindgen.

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#713

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

oblio wrote: post #217
patates wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Coding assistants are also really great at porting from one language to the other I had a broken, one-off Perl script, a relic from the days when everyone thought Drupal was the future (long time ago). It was originally designed to migrate a site from an unmaintained internal CMS to Drupal. The CMS was ancient and it only ran in a VM for "look what we built a million years ago" purposes (I even had written permissi…

> It burned through a mountain of tokens, but 10/10 - would generate tens of thousands of lines of useless code again. Pardon me, and, yes, I know we're on HN, but I guess you're... rich? I imagine a single run like this probably burns through tens or hundreds of dollars. For a joke, basically. I guess I understand why some people really like AI :-)

It's something you'd do once for shits and giggles, before realizing it's only funny once.

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#715

Post by qwm »

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.…

I did this exact same thing for porting a compiler from one language to another with Codex. I run tests at every step, and verified that bytecode output was byte-for-byte identical. I was very impressed at the results, and this is coming from someone who's always pointing out issues with AI programming.

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#716

Post by philipallstar »

mikkupikku wrote: post #681
mghackerlady wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vibe Coding is like porn for programmers. It probably isn't good for you, and you'd probably be better off actually doing the thing yourself, but it feels good and satisfies our desires for instant gratification

[flagged]

Comparing bitching about vibe coding to porn is like watching porn. You come away feeling better, but you didn't engage meaningfully with anyone else.

Who's next?

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#717

Post by jibal »

muyuu wrote: post #691
jibal wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> code you didn't write He did write it. > you're banking in the LLMs quite strongly when you do that, which may just work but i would be very worried about myself if i were in his boots I too would worry if it were you doing it.

> He did write it. he did not, the LLM did it > I too would worry if it were you doing it. i would not worry about anything you do, because it's obvious you would never get to that point

"It" was the C++ code ... you don't even understand what you yourself wrote.

> i would not worry about anything you do, because it's obvious you would never get to that point

Childish whatabouting and projection. I will never respond to you again.

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#718

Post by jibal »

jibal wrote: post #355
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…

> It's honest. It's not, nor is it well informed. People are currently developing languages specifically for use by LLMs. > It's not the best tool for the job for a lot of things Then how could it possibly be the final language? > if the LLMs make writing it as fast as anything else - whelp, I can't see any reason not to do it in Rust This has nothing to do with the claim that it's the final language.

What did I say that is false?

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#719

Post by rstuart4133 »

simonw wrote: post #127
philipallstar wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> despite what the haters say Thinking people who disagree with you hate you or hate the thing you like is a recipe for disaster. It's much better to not love or hate things like this, and instead just observe and come to useful, outcome-based conclusions.

LLMs really do attract haters in the classic sense though. You'll find them in almost every thread on here.

At this point, I say it attracts LLM Luddites.

I have a lot of sympathy for the Luddites after reading about the sudden loss of jobs and lifestyle, the new textile factories running roughshod over all sorts of ethical boundaries in pursuit of profit - like using child labour, and horrendous accident rates and working hours.

It's sad in a way the Luddites weren't more successful than they were, as there were decades of harm inflicted by these newfangled ideas before the kinks were ironed out. But some of the blame for that must be laid at the Luddites' feet - they were focused on preserving the past, choosing to remain in denial about the inevitability of the wave of change crashing down on them. They left the job of ironing out the kinks to the workers in the factories that displaced them.

With LLMs, we look be to taking the same broken path as the textile industry and its Luddites, sadly.

Re: Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI

#720

Post by shakow »

ricardobeat wrote: post #324
staticassertion wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a script in another language. It was node, took up >200MB of RAM that I wanted back. "claude, rewrite this in rust". 192MB of memory returned to me.

This is sad to see. Node was originally one of the memory efficient options – it’s roots are solving the c10k problem. Mind sharing what libraries/frameworks you were using?

> it’s roots are solving the c10k problem

The C10K was a long-solved problem when Node came out; just it was not for what 99% of people used at the time, i.e. PHP/Python/Ruby.

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