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Average open source project nowadays
(lemmy.nz)
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this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2026
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I wonder how the rustaceans feel about their language being associated with slop.
I'm a professional software engineer writing Rust for many years now.
Honestly, I am very happy that AI is using Rust. Much better that AI uses Rust than Python! If you think AI written Rust is bad, you have no idea how sloppy AI written Python is.
Rust is a great language. Turns out the same stuff that makes it great for humans also makes it great for agents. This is not a bad thing, this is a win-win.
Historically, Rust's biggest disadvantage has been how hard the language is to write and how much you sometimes need to fight the compiler. This disadvantage is quite effectively mitigated by AI, since you can let the AI fight the compiler and write most of the code. So you get all the advantages that Rust brings with basically none of the downsides.
I'm just happy that Rust was invented before LLMs. If Rust did not exist before LLMs, the code the AIs would be writing would be a lot worse.
Hope that answers it.
We understand you perfectly well; Rust is fine, too, but no language can take the place of C. I mean, wouldn't it have been better if it had been written in C?
Why do you say that? I definitely think Rust can take the place of C. Not just can actually, I'd go as far as to say that Rust should take the place of C. C is much too unsafe to be used in today's age. There's really no excuse to use a memory unsafe language today if you're starting something new.
It would not have been better if it was written in C. Rust is just as fast and much better.
While my comment is about c++, not c, I did learn about one use case where rust is strictly worse than c++. Unbelievably low latency applications. Such as software that trades stocks. The way it's implemented, is by sharing memory addresses across code intentionally having the same address written to and read from across threads. Something rust is sort of designed to not support.
It's the only use case I know of where that's true.
I don't know where you've heard this, but none of it is true. Rust is definitely used for low-latency trading, and that's actually one place where it really shines.
C++ does not "support" that either. C++ will let you write that code, but if you write code like that in C++, it's undefined behavior and trust me, no low-latency trading firm wants undefined behavior in their trading software (just imagine what could go wrong...).
Rust helps you avoid such issues. However, Rust definitely "supports" undefined behavior in the exact same way. If you want to share mutable pointers across threads and you don't give a crap about undefined behavior... I mean, that's really, really stupid but you can just write
unsafeand then you can do exactly what you can do in C++ as well.It's largely based on this video: https://youtu.be/QNPwKMOQIKM
Which has a quite complete list of sources.
I actually like Rust too, and I’m not against it; however, C is currently the best-known programming language in the world. Still, I like your idea.
By what metric? It's certainly not the most popular language. I don't think it's the most famous language either. Probably more people have heard of Python than C.
Let me ask a question, then: why were the Linux kernel and the Linux ecosystem written in C rather than Python? No matter what other language you might consider, nothing can truly take the place of C; if you are a software developer, you should already know this.
... because C is a systems langauge that you can use to build a kernel? While Python is an interpreted runtime that cannot target bare-metal?
Rust can easily take the place of C, as Rust can also target bare-metal. It can do everything that C can do (perhaps aside from compiling to some very esoteric platforms). The reason Linux is written in C is cause C was the best option at the time, not because C is some magical language that can do stuff that no other language can.
Also, just because Linux was written in C doesn't mean it is the best-known, most famous or most widely used language. Python is much more well-known and widely used than C.
There’s no need to argue; if that’s what you say, then so be it, my friend. I’m not trying to start a debate about which language is "better"—I’m simply pointing out which one is more comprehensive. Anyway, have it your way.
@SorteKanin
Who asked such a silly question?
Seems you don't see the full chain of replies on your Mastodon instance. Not sure why
@SorteKanin
Appearently not.. Odd its fosstodon.
How does "written in C" make something better?
People used to say the same things about the Linux kernel, but its current state is actually quite good. In other words, C is a standard and robust language.
C is older than Linux. Rust is inside Linux.
It just shows how safe the language is, LLMs have to rely on Rust to prevent all the memory bugs. Same for proof assistants
Yeah, it's qualities that are useful for humans, too, like frontloading all the errors to compile time + good compiler error messages.
Like, I'm annoyed that people will be irrational about it, much like they associate Rust with rewrites in permissive licenses, even though it is just a tool. It entirely depends on how you use the tool.
But irrational people gonna irrational. Not much you can do about that...
Probably the same way Unity feels about their game engine being associated with awful low budget shovelware games. The game engine was popular with low budget games because you can use the engine for free… But you have to display the “Made with Unity” splash screen for a few seconds as your game boots up. And notably, you can pay a licensing fee to remove that splash screen requirement. Basically the drug dealer special: Get the newbie game devs familiar with the engine for free, then charge the publishers to use the engine that their employees all already know.
The issue (which Unity didn’t initially foresee when they wrote their licensing terms) is that all of the shovelware games used Unity for free, and all of them had the big “Made with Unity” splash. So Unity very quickly became associated with super low effort shovelware games.
They probably love it?
Especially when Go is superior for AI generated code 🤓
I used to program in Rust. It's a great language. I don't do that anymore because %99.99 of Rust projects are slop nowadays.
So instead of fixing the balance with your human Rust code, you instead associate the language as slop because people choose it for their slop projects since it's much safer and fast?
If anything, the slop projects working efficiently and not crashing every 5 minutes is the best proof you can have that Rust is uniquely great at what it offers, every language should aim to protect the program from its weakest link programmer which is AI in this case
Language isn't slop. Where did I say that? I literally said it's a great language.
What? Are you serious? A lot of LLM-generated text is in English too, let's learn an obscure conlang and stop speaking English.
This could be a great idea; it’s a thousand times better than using LLVM.
You know that's not the same
How is it not?
English is the universal language. Rust isn't. Using rust is a choice and not mandatory.
No, it isn't. But ignoring the chauvinism there, okay, replace English with any other language that LLMs can speak.
I agree that calling it "universal" is both an exaggeration and chauvinistic, but English is the most widely spoken language in the world, both in total combined as first plus second language and it's by far the most spoken as a second language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers
Rust is not in the same position among computer languages. Javascript holds that distinction, with Rust being way down, outside the top 10: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/technology (it's still outside the top 10 in the 2026 survey, but the 2025 chart is much easier to read and interpret at a glance).
So Rust is indeed not the same as English, which makes it not an apt comparison. One can much more easily completely ignore and avoid Rust as a programming language than they can ignore and avoid English as a human language. They can surely both be ignored and avoided, but it's much more difficult to do so with English.
How did English become the most widely spoken language? Most certain through far more bloodshed than anything to do with the production of AI systems. If Rust's association with AI is a reason to avoid using Rust, then yes, the social conditions surrounding English usage are sufficient grounds for a movement away from English as the lingua franca.
Anyway, like I said in my comment, you can replace "English" with any other language that LLMs speak fluently. I gave English as the example language because that is the language this forum is in. There are much less widely spoken languages that LLMs are also fluent in. Should users of those languages abandon their languages? I was responding to that person's ridiculous reasoning.
Sure, but this is way too much arguing for a minor and harmless statement. You seem to be making a huge deal out of one person on the internet saying that they stopped programming in Rust because they felt that rust projects were getting dominated by LLM output. They weren't advocating for others to do the same. They simply stated a personal choice. I choose to let people make the choices that they want to make and state their reasons for doing so, especially if their choice has no effect on me.
Even the joke meme in their original post wasn't making an accusation towards rust but simply saying that rust use in combination with all the other indicators in the meme (i.e., "I made", "open source", and "in a month") point towards a project being vibe-coded.
I didn't make a huge deal out of it; I made one short comment (sincerely) asking if they were serious, and replied because it turned into a longer comment chain. I don't think it's a big deal. I am surprised that they weren't joking and find their rationale ridiculous. And I separately take issue with the chauvinism expressed in another comment, but I don't think the original comment is a big deal.
That's fair. I just thought that it was a very prolonged back and forth between you two for a small thing. I only added it to it though, lol.
But does it also mean we should all learn JS as it is the universal programming language?
Not at all, but that's not what the conversation was about. It was about whether someone stopping using Rust was the same as someone stopping using English.
I'm not even English? It's my second language. You can't deny that most people speak english including international politics.
What criteria for using rust is now not fulfilled anymore because slop uses rust? seems like you used the language for gaining Internet points
To be honest it's not rust. It's more like a mentality thing and probably not logical.
It's like not raising your hand because it has become a Nazi salute. The act of raising your hand isn't bad but it's associated with a bad intention.
It's the same with Rust. It's a great language and I actually really enjoy it. But seeing so many slop projects with it made me feel bad. That's it.
I really don't know why you're getting downvoted here. It seems people just want to pile on. All you're doing is talking about how you feel and how it's impacting your actions. It sucks that this stuff is driving you away from Rust.