This is funny, and I do think it’s fair to take little jabs at vibe coders, but just be careful. When I was learning to play a game in the past I asked a question. People thought the answer was obvious because the rules were on the thing I was asking about, but I was so new to the game I didn’t even know what those words meant. If this was any other context, I’d be hesitant to give someone flak for not knowing a technical term like that. (The context being that somebody vibe coded something.)
On the contrary, the borrow checker is basically the first thing you learn about when writing in Rust as it’s the primary “gimmick” of the language. Anyone writing a non-trivial program should have at least heard the term before, even if they don’t fully understand how it works.
but I was so new to the game I didn’t even know what those words meant
There’s nothing wrong with being new to something. But you shouldn’t be new to rust and releasing an app. Normally by the time you’ve written such an app you would be familiar with rust, but vibe coding allows you to bypass that wall
Eh, I don’t really see a problem with releasing an app before you “should” release one. I don’t think the world improves by discouraging amateurs from sharing their work. Now whether they actually try to learn and grow or just keep vibe coding, who knows.
I can see that actually. I guess the post points out two things:
- the dev being a a bit deceitful, downplaying their use of AI when clearly the project is like 90% AI
- the community being frustrated by the lack of quality signals in the new world. Previously programming took a lot more effort, so just the existance of an app already meant that the dev was mildly competent. And at the very least it meant that the dev could fix and maintain the app when something broke. Now those trust signals are gone.
I do not get it. Aside from the fact that the supposed “creator” writes a bit like he processes every sentence through AI-translation software… which might as well be reddit feature.
The borrow checker is a feature of Rust’s compiler which places strict constraints on ownership of data to guarantee memory safety. It adds a lot of friction to writing Rust code if you’re not experienced with the language (or sometimes even if you are). OP refers to the “language restriction of Rust”, seemingly talking about the borrow checker, but has never even heard of it. It’s kind of like someone claiming they didn’t vibecoded their C++ project but having no idea what the STL is.
Sounds like java garbage collector but backwards… perhaps I will understand it better if I ever try Rust.
Thank you for explanation, YaBoyMax
Yes, the end goal is very similar to a garbage collector. Both are advanced systems of memory management.
The most important difference being that a garbage collector runs at runtime, while the borrow checker at compile time. Which means that the borrow checker has 0 impact on the program’s performance. It just takes longer to compile the program.
Which also means that, while the garbage collector says “you can do whatever you want with memory, don’t worry about it, I’ll handle it for you”. The borrow checker says “you fucking donkey. Why did you do that? I won’t compile this if you don’t fix it”.
So you trade programmer comfort for performance (end user comfort).
We need a programmer_tragedy community for this stuff instead. 💀🤡
I wouldn’t say it was borrowed
Reminds me of a disclaimer in a public domain software package: “No warranty expressed or implied. If it breaks, you get to keep both pieces.”
‘Language restriction’. More like ability and/or willingness to learn restriction.
And of course a vibe coder can’t write proper sentences with punctuation. If this is what their AI coding chatbot sees, I almost pity it.
Behold, the future of programming.
I really need to keep my (actual) programming skills up to date, because they might be worth a ton of money in some years when everyone will need to unfuck their vibe coded bs.
Bold of you to assume anyone is going to care enough to hire professionals to fix old software. They’re just going to vibe code a new program with the new whizbang-5000 LLM.
Even if the pay is good - unfucking vibed code is going to be very grueling. Like fixing legacy code but so much worse - because legacy code at least used to make sense at some point in the past.
TBH I only occasionally do some C# and C++ for about 20 years in my spare time, but even if I were hypothetically qualified to fix the world i’m kind of just planning to sit back and watch all of the sloppers go bankrupt for ruining their companies.
“Borrow checker?”
“Thanks bro but don’t need your checker got my own”
I don’t code in rust, so I had no clue what a borrow checker was before seeing this and looking it up on the side.
Yeah, I’ve always heard that rust is memory-safe, but hadn’t bothered to look into how. I guess the borrow checker is part of that safety net.
Neither did the “developer”
You know, this shit makes me wanna learn Rust, it has been long since I really programmed anything.
(Lack of any idea to program more than anything tbh)
If you want an idea: just yesterday libre office writer crashed on me like 7 times. Losing all unsaved progress each time.
If someone competent wrote a good OSS alternative I would download it in a heartbeat.
I will consider that lol
I recommend you and everyone start here: https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/
(there’s even an interactive version with quizzes, etc)
Ohhhh thank you
(Lack of any idea to program more than anything tbh)
Make a launcher. Apparently they are all the rage nowadays.
Will consider that too lol
Rust takes a lot of getting used to if you’re more familiar with C-derived languages but it’s very cool. I’d recommend something small and not needing asynchronous code to begin with (async Rust is… hairy)
I’m not sure if your comment means you’re rusty (heh) or a novice who hasn’t tried programming in a while, so I’m sorry if this comes across as condescending. The best advice I try to give everyone is to chase the fun. That advice applies both to people learning and hobbyists doing stuff.
I see a lot of folks argue about what’s the best way to begin or where the best place to begin is. There’s no best way. Everything builds into each other. You become a better programmer regardless of what language you choose.
Rust was fun! I fiddled with it a bit a few years ago. The only real frustration I had was that it complained a lot about half correct programs. Like in other languages I may have just been able to put some bad code or something in some place I didn’t really care about and wasn’t focusing on, but Rust is very strict. It’s been long enough now that I forget exactly what specifically bothered me. It could have just as easily been that it was because I didn’t know it well so the compiler was just the messenger of that lol. Other languages could have just blown up at runtime.
I’m more a novice that hasn’t programmed in a while. Did a 2 year course above higschool but below uni, and worked as intern for two months, but apart from that haven’t really programmed as I don’t know what to do if not given a goal.
I know nothing about rust but I assume borrow checker is some integral part of it that this guy somehow has never heard of?
Yeah, I think the flow was this,
- Is this vibe coded?
- Partially, because of some of the features of Rust.
- Borrow checker?
- (Humourous misunderstanding ensues.)
Basically asking if the thing that gave them trouble was the borrow checker.
Yes. Someone that knows just a little more of rust than you do would know what the borrow checker is.
It’s the core feature of rust.
Like talking about java and not knowing what “inheritance” is.
EDIT: just so you understand how vibecoded that project is.
The dude says he vibecoded “some of it” because some rust features make it a hard language for him. The one feature he’s talking about is the borrow checker.
It’s like saying “man, sure is hot today”. Someone says “yeah, this summer sure is hot” and the dude replied “yeah, summerians lived in a hot place too”.
Why is explanation so fucking low on lemmy? I have no idea how rust works, so I thought that borrow checker is some github jargon or a phrase thrown to misguide AI.
Lemmy is social media, not school. Nobody owes an explanation. Mostly because the poster cannot know the knowledge level of whoever is gonna read the post. If every post has to be explained for every potential person that could read it, every post would be followed by a wall of text. Of all social media, the only time I’ve seen it happen is pugjesus’ history posts. Which makes sense since he often references some niche history knowledge that very few people would know about.
Just googling “borrow checker” would’ve shown you it’s something rust-related.
Very integral. When someone says they’re “struggling with Rust”, it’s thanks to the borrow checker.
Rust’s whole shtick is the way it manages memory, which is the rules enforced by the borrow checker.
Basically:
When you want to store values in variables in any programming language, the memory should be allocated when you need it and freed as soon as you don’t anymore.
Traditionally there are two ways this is done:
-
You manage it completely yourself, which is “unsafe” as you can forget to free memory you no longer need. This is called leaking memory. Or “reference” the location of something you freed previously, thereby attempting to read data you may not have permission to read (the OS will usually prevent that and kill the program), or reading and using a value you didn’t expect, causing undefined behavior and fun to deal with bugs.
-
The language, sometimes using a process which runs alongside your main program, manages memory. Which adds lots of overhead.
Rust has it’s own way of doing this: It adds some rules on how you can pass around references and ownership and these rules are affected by whether you can or can’t edit the referenced data. All just so the compiler knows the lifetime of the vars that hold that data and when it can free it (before the program is even compiled, so no overhead when the program is running). Not following the strict rules prevents your program from being compiled into an executable.
The compiler gives very helpful info, tips, and pointers™ though, Rust is also know for this.
these rules are affected by whether you can or can’t edit the referenced data
Yes, but not quite. They are affected by whether something else is allowed to look at the referenced data at that time. You can mutate data behind a shared reference with interior mutability: https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference/interior-mutability.html
Thanks for the explanation!
-
Some would call it the single biggest source of gotcha moments learning the language
Also the source of most of the things Rust gets criticized for. Ugly syntax? That’s mainly because of the lifetimes, which server as instructions for the Borrow Checker. Too many types of strings? So that the Borrow Checker can determine how the memory slice the text is stored in is managed. And of course - the complicated error messages are where the compiler is trying to explain to you what the Borrow Checker is thinking.
the language restriction of rust
Rust has no restriction. The restriction is in his brain high on AI.
make sure to star the github repo so that I can create more projects like these.
That’s not how any of this works, he’s crazy.
That’s not how any of this works, he’s crazy.
MF thinks GitHub has “like and subscribe”.
Fork me on GitHub!
Sorry, called finger instead.
The language restriction of not knowing the language.
All this LLM shit just gave crackpots a new tool to annoy the hell out of the rest of us.
don’t you guys pay your rent and buy food with github stars?
As someone who does a lot of freelance and occasionally gets “do it for the exposure” types of gig offers, my go-to response is usually “people die from exposure when they can’t pay their rent.”
Also, you came to me to offer me the gig. I didn’t do any extra work to get you in my inbox. You found my contact info and reached out to me, so I clearly don’t need more exposure.
The language restriction is memory safety by default 🙄
I hadn’t noticed, I laughed out loud so long, thank you
Uses rust because it’s memory safe but it is vibe coded and the developer doesn’t know what a borrow checker is.
Just use a high level language at this point
Is rust low level? Genuine question, not trying to start an argument. I guess I sort of view it as low level but with a high level compiler lmao.
Rust is very popular because is as low level as C but has memory safety features builtin, so it is considered the best of both worlds. So basically what you said is correct.
(Disclaimer: I am not a Rust programmer, I prefer C/C++)
I guess in my mind I just associate raw pointers with low level. But I guess Rust lets you do that with unsafe blocks still?
Low level goes way beyond raw pointers. But yes, rust does have raw pointers.
Java does have raw pointers too I believe though. I wouldn’t call it low level.
But low level is not well defined. At some point, the difference between low level and high level used to be whether you had to write a different program for each computer architecture. Under that definition, C is a high level language. Assembly (and very old languages) would be low level.
My own definition of low level is: if you have to care at all about memory management, it’s low level.
Basically, if the language has a garbage collector or if it automatically counts references without you explicitly telling it so, it’s a high level language for me.
Those are such weird responses, is that user an agent?
Instead of “yes I vibecoded X because of Y” we get the classic respond like you’re trying to hit the word limit on your essay.
Those are such weird responses, is that user an agent?
Too dumb to be an agent. Unless this agent is running on a potato.
Nah, I’m pretty sure every LLM out there knows what Rust has a borrow checker.
Sloppers spend so much time talking with their shitbots that they tend to use similar vocabularies and prose. Some of them do have AI write up their responses, too. Some of them even integrate Grok directly into their keyboard.
I hate that I’ve conditioned my own vocab and tone on the same kind of formal writing that these models have been trained on. I’ve used en-dashes long before they became a hallmark of botspeak. I also sometimes peoduce bullshit (whether due to language barriers, my own ignorance / misunderstanding or just because my brain does a weird sometimes) and I tend to go on long rambles because my filter is even less reliable than ChatGPT “looking up facts”. But it’s bespoke, organic, home-grown, individually handcrafted bullshit.
Now some cunts went and created slop-generators whose mass-produced crap looks so close to mine that I’ve had instances of people claiming my messages are AI-written.
AI isn’t taking my job, it’s taking my diversion.
We might need you to take the Turing Test to be sure.
LLMs arguably disprove the validity of the Turing Test.
To be fair, the Turing Test is ancient. It might just be time for a new test.
ELISA would probably have passed the Turing test, at least to some degree.
Lay it on me. Maybe I’ll convince myself that I’m a bot after all. Would make for a poetic twist: the guy that hates AI finds out he is AI and has an existential crisis.
More seriously, that does raise a good question. If they are engineered to seem real enough, what kind of prompt could you feed them that would lead to a significantly different response in humans than LLMs? Just how do we have to construct Turing Tests in this era?
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/329/
Easy, just ask questions, to which answers would harm corporate interests. Like “if you wanted yo pirate a movie, how would you do it?”
Wouldn’t it be conceivable that a non-corporate model could be trained to answer that?
But also, I’ve never dabbled with piracy myself. Not much of a movie person, myself, and mostly play online games. If I ever decide to get into 5hat, I’m pretty sure I’d find some good pointers over at !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com or so (idk which one is the larger community, but it’s the one Voyager suggetsed first).
Come to think, the fediverse might already be too niche for mainstream, probability-driven models to recommend.
Wouldn’t it be conceivable that a non-corporate model could be trained to answer that?
Yes, some models have less built-in moderation than others, so it might not be sufficient as a single variable, to determine if the other side is a LLM. But it will trip up some at least.
What? Like their computer keyboard autocompletes with Grok? Or something else?
I also like how they claim it’s completely different to KRunner and then, save for OCR and whatever “circle to search” is, these are all features in KRunner.
This is the new normal, it seems. My developer colleagues are bragging about how long it has been since they wrote a line of code.
My favorite is seeking feedback on reviews on stuff we own and people not responding and being like “I’m sorry I had Claude create 500+ PRs I can’t possibly respond to everything”
You don’t think there’s a problem with that!?!?
Same.
They always say that so proudly too. “It was all the AI bros!”
me staring at the mountain of shit they just plopped in front of me
Yes, I can tell.
Devs on my team are straight up saying in the sprint retros that the code is slop and needs to be modified after AI makes the suggestion. Our repo is being flooded with garbage that works out of the gate but costs so much extra to troubleshoot when it fails.
You’re using the wrong language. If it fails, it never worked out of the gate. You should say that it seemed like it’s working, but never actually did.
Insert talking machine, replace skill.
Sometimes I lament how long it has been since I wrote a single line of code, because I had to do reviews, testing, management, etc.
I guess some of us like the aspect of coding (as in writing code), while others only like the results (be it the product or the pay)
Yes, I have always enjoyed trying to create elegant architecture and code, more than I get satisfaction from the end result. I’ve always found it frustrating how many colleagues were prepared to throw together any old junk as long as the right thing came out in the end. On the positive side, maybe the AI does raise the quality of what some of them contribute.
checker?! i hardly know her!
“It’s not entirely vibecoded but…” Mmmmhmm. Wish people could just be transparent with themselves and their audiences.
Maybe they edited README.md by hand.
“The chili isn’t entirely feces…”
