The money contributed to the Rust Foundation by large corporate members supports initiatives[0] that benefit all users of Rust, and I am happy for it. The slow and deliberative approach the Foundation took to crafting the AI policy, and even the hedging language in the policy itself, are indicators of a healthy open organization. The author's scorn shows immaturity.
An "open" healthy organisation does not stack the cards during major policy discussions by forbidding major arguments against the adoption of a position its backers clearly want. The author is right to call that out. It was an extremely disappointing move for Rust to make.
Yes, this is the difference between a BDFL. A single person can make a decision faster, than a group of people. And consensus often leaves most people a bit miffed.
Again, the issue starts when the dictator grows mad and starts making decisions that make every contributor uncomfortable.
> To my horror, many software projects were accepting LLM-generated code. I had thought LLMs were unpopular among developers.
Why would a really stochastic auto-complete and analyzer be disliked by developers? LLMs are a useful tool, sometimes, but they aren't the <WE WILL REPLACE ALL WORKFORCE BY 2028> levels of hype that current frontier labs need to justify their costs.
> But Memory Safety!
I'd be genuinely flabbergasted if Zig ends up as safe as Rust without any overhead. So, no, adding Fil-C doesn't count. We have memory safety with overhead. We call it Java/C#/JavaScript/Go/<INSERT VM LANG HERE>.
TL;DR; the author feels betrayed because the Rust leadership didn't take a strong stance against LLMs like the Zig team did.
IMHO LLMs are causing lots of issues in the software world, especially in the open source communities but I don't think Zig's blanket rejection of everything AI-related is a good thing.
Did it come out a Rust fork with no AI contributions, like in the same fashion it came up a Zig fork that accepted AI contributions (the one Bun was using before rusting)?
Not at all the take I got, it was a specific, very corporate, section about ”say nothing bad about LLMs” that was later removed due to backlash that caused the author to lose trust.
They even go into specifics regarding the LLM policy and that it’s in many parts sound.
When I read the mentioned section I was very baffled, it’s like if Jensen of NVIDIA had made an appearance and wanted to sell GPUs.
Yes, this is the difference between a BDFL. A single person can make a decision faster, than a group of people. And consensus often leaves most people a bit miffed.
Again, the issue starts when the dictator grows mad and starts making decisions that make every contributor uncomfortable.
> To my horror, many software projects were accepting LLM-generated code. I had thought LLMs were unpopular among developers.
Why would a really stochastic auto-complete and analyzer be disliked by developers? LLMs are a useful tool, sometimes, but they aren't the <WE WILL REPLACE ALL WORKFORCE BY 2028> levels of hype that current frontier labs need to justify their costs.
> But Memory Safety!
I'd be genuinely flabbergasted if Zig ends up as safe as Rust without any overhead. So, no, adding Fil-C doesn't count. We have memory safety with overhead. We call it Java/C#/JavaScript/Go/<INSERT VM LANG HERE>.
Don’t forget that those money ultimately go to individuals, that often willingly sacrifice their opinions and positions for the fat paycheque.
IMHO LLMs are causing lots of issues in the software world, especially in the open source communities but I don't think Zig's blanket rejection of everything AI-related is a good thing.
When I read the mentioned section I was very baffled, it’s like if Jensen of NVIDIA had made an appearance and wanted to sell GPUs.