Thread

1. muglug · 1790345200 · focus · HN ↗

   > Rust is the best general-purpose language for the new world of AI-driven development.

   Funny, the Python guys say Python is the best general-purpose language for AI and the Go guys say Go is the best general-purpose language for AI etc etc

   1. Tuna-Fish · 1790346839 · focus · HN ↗

      I've found that the guardrails of a strong, expressive type system are amazing for LLMs, especially if you don't use the top-of-the-line models but stick to the cheaper options. Agents need feedback to do their magic, and the type system is great for that.

      But on the other hand, the compile time of Rust is really counterproductive. On large, established projects, most prompts I write now spend more time compiling on my machine than they spend outputting tokens. In a way this is great because the tokens are the expensive part, but it does mean that when faster LLMs will come, they will not meaningfully improve iteration speed for me.

      I wonder how much of the compile time of Rust is inherent to the type system. There might be room for a language with slower runtime speed (GC?), but as good of a type system as Rust, so long as compile times are much faster. Switching languages has never been easier, anyone have any suggestions? IMO hard requirements are algebraic types and error handling based on them.

      1. tmpz22 · 1790347528 · focus · HN ↗

         Can your team read and audit Rust code as fluently as Go or Python?

         I realized all the Rust code produced meant squat if it couldnt be audited well afterwards.

         1. Tuna-Fish · 1790348155 · focus · HN ↗

            Auditing Rust is much easier and faster than either Go or Python. They both contain a lot of footguns that are not always immediately apparent from visible code. Rust is much more explicit.

            1. lucideer · 1790348713 · focus · HN ↗

               This is assuming equal familiarity with all languages but I presume this comment is more referring to talent pools & experience. A good engineer can traverse & review many languages but most are quite restricted in the scope of what they can easily read - they miss a footgun or two in python but they're not grokking any of the rust whatsoever.

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