The time is right for AI to generate a basic C web framework just like Node Express with request, response, template, cookies, auth, db, websockets and some other libs
It would be blazing fast, for use by AI itself
Just for fun
It would be blazing fast, for use by AI itself
Just for fun
C introduces the possibility of memory-safety issues, which are deadly in server software that's exposed to the Internet. And AI, from what I've seen, is not all that great at writing software with zero memory bugs.
Rust closes the memory safety holes, at the cost of making the programmer think through ownership and architecture much more carefully. Those are exactly the skills that AI is good at. So if you want something fast and are writing it with AI anyway, why not have the AI generate Rust code?
> unpaid Linux maintainers
Cargo is a danger to society. People need to stop using these unsafe and dangerous technology.
Lean yet complete standard library is what should be preferred instead of that supply chain, especially in AI era that makes half of them obsolete and redundant.
The typical C project has far fewer dependencies than the typical Rust project. Those dependencies are usually individually larger and either maintained by OS maintainers or there is a copy of the code that is built for the project and is readily available for audit. Those copies can't change without direct action.
Its less trouble to setup static analysis, address sanitizer, and similar tools for a C project than it would be to manage local copies of thousands of dependencies for a Rust project.
There's a bunch of threads going on simultaneously on HN now about how people often misuse AI by applying rules of thumb learned from doing things as a professional to what they prompt the AI to do, rather than just asking it directly for what you want. This is one of those cases. Many of the rules of thumb of professional programming no longer hold under the radically different economics of AI-driven development.
Its not even close to free in either $, your own personal time, or calendar time.
It is trivial with Rust to set up asan and friends. You just
$ RUSTFLAGS=-Zsanitizer=address cargo build -Zbuild-std --target x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
This works for your dependencies too. This isn’t C, you don’t need to manage all of those builds individually. That’s what the build system is for.
People tend to use it because they like it.
The sole advantage of Rust over C or C++ is that the borrow-checker provides a set of guardrails for the AI so that certain classes of bugs become impossible to generate, and then the compiler error will feed back to the AI so that it knows it's gone off the rails. This is a common failure mode for AI: frequently it does what you tell it to, but then its attention mechanism isn't on things like security or robustness and so it unknowingly introduces a crash or memory safety violation. The sole advantage over Java is that it generates faster code, which is normally something you have to prompt the AI to do. All the stuff about programmer ergonomics or ecosystem health is meaningless, because there are no programmers.
I also disagree that even if you vibe code in natural language (English or any other), platform selection still matters and it’s naturally a preference and experience related reflection of a vibe coder who positions himself as architect, product owner and analyst more than a single platform choice zealot.
In such case selection of modern C/C++ is equally revenant as religiously pitching about a single rust feature as differentiator here. It simply reflects the ability to control author’s vision of the outcome and ability to control it.
If not, humans and AIs alike will continue to benefit from tools and techniques that allow them to more easily grasp the systems they're building and ecosystems that allow them to build systems in collaboration with other humans and AIs.
Better and safer than C. Much nicer for the programmer than Rust.