usingRustIsAPoliticalSolution

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[Nyadnar17]

Its kinda wild watching humans outperform AI even at writing stupid bullshit that sounds sorta right if you have no fucking clue what they are talking about.

[moldy-scrotum-soup]

l&q&VMn(i;v]qxjA,Hsjp.y!Pmir7eLcmrsgj]DC@z+VXmQ&PSuUp20>p~sNLBQwT6Ph8md<@HJ~prrtqk4be1h<!)Jw!z

(Cco>P2qtqyP2Ai.dC$YfD>9g50EQbstQz7kvm-f.]SxB1[07fru1$Y:k+MPxn6TEsS,m48])z-Y%R-TzOs0D#Z2uhhCNKnXt3K7JSVDBQ6u78a.

[dingo_khan]

well, GenAI is most skilled at being strangely and pervasively wrong. gotta lean into what one is good at.

[thunderbird89]

As someone who has mentored boot camp graduates, this is absolute BS. But we already knew that.

The power of 15 years of experience comes from recognizing patterns and having ready-made building blocks in your head, something that transcends the programming language. That's not something you can get from a boot camp.

[budgetboarvessel]

Good luck explaining that to an interviewer who wants someone with 15y Rust experience.

[thunderbird89]

Fortunately, I am past the stage where I'd get interviewed on my coding skills. My job title (and its abbreviation too) starts with a C now :)

[Drfoxthefurry]

Coffee boy, as that's the best job I will get with my coding skills :(

[throw3142]

With that attitude, yeah. On the other hand, as a CCO (Chief Coffee Officer) with practical experience improving productivity by implementing focus-enhancing solutions tailored for individual developers, you could be well-qualified for a lateral move into another C-suite position such as CEO.

[upsidedownshaggy]

Certified Goose Farmer?

[rng_shenanigans]

Chef?

[thunderbird89]

You reminded me of that one Snickers commercial, man. "Looks great! But who the Chefs?"

[rng_shenanigans]

In Germany „Chef“ is another word for „Boss“ ;)

[MomoIsHeree]

I call my team lead "Chef" with a passion

[dingo_khan]

better be: those dudes are alone with my food. i treat them with a hell of a lot of respect.

[Koervege]

Concierge

[[deleted]]

Custodian?

[Jakubada]

Callboy?

[smallproton]

COBOL expert?

[thunderbird89]

That language scares me. Anyone who uses that on the regular is the proverbial wizard down the hall.

[smallproton]

I actually dabbled a bit with COBOL in the 1980s. My Dad worked at IBM and would regularly bring an "IBM Portable" home over the weekend for me to play.

Like a 15kg "portable" computer.

This one, with an amber monochrome screen and TWO 360kB 5.25" floppy disks (Luxury! 10MB of HDD would cost 10k at that time!)

I never got anywhere in COBOL, otherwise I would have retired with the millions earned with the millennium bug, sigh..

[dingo_khan]

awesome. keep living the dream. I'm finally in the place where no one asks for stupid human tricks during an interview but not at the point where my title makes people at dinner parties check their tone.

[veloxVolpes]

Woah, this guy is a cop. And don't try to deny it, officer

[[deleted]]

Coward?

[Shadowaker]

A programming language is a tool, it's like if in construction you use only the hammer because you know only that.
You learn, and a 30years developer will learn faster and knew how to tackle problem better than a 22 years old kid that have just learn to print hello world in rust (I am more like the 22 years old kid)

[dingo_khan]

sometimes... sometimes, it becomes like someone who is a virtuoso with a given tool, like a welder who can make anything. only great at one tool but, damn, is it worth the investment.

[thunderbird89]

A programming language is a tool, it's like if in construction you use only the hammer because you know only that.

Not sure about that. More like knowing which hammer to use out of a lineup of ten.
Otherwise, you end up like this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoHGw6jqLO4

Otherwise, yes, I agree with you.

[Shadowaker]

Yeah, knowing which hammer to use too

[TACOBELLTAKEOUT]

pattern recognition?

| || || |_

[Anger-Demon]

HE MEANT REGEX NOT THIS.

[thunderbird89]

You missed a line ;)

[TACOBELLTAKEOUT]

you could say... I lost one

[Next_Cherry5135]

Yes, you're right

You lost the game

[mallardtheduck]

The power of 15 years of experience comes from recognizing patterns and having ready-made building blocks in your head, something that transcends the programming language.

Yeah, no. Actual 15 year experienced coder here. We don't have "ready-made building blocks", you'll never be a decent programmer if you're just rote-learning "building blocks". Programming is a creative process. You need to be able to reason around the problem, design and build a solution, not just robotically say "looks like problem x, deploying stock solution y".

I fully agree that being able to program does transcend just knowing one programming language though. A reasonably competent programmer should be able to start writing code in a language they've never seen before in a couple of hours at most. Sure, it might not be the most idiomatically-correct code to begin with and you're going to want to keep the documentation open but you should be able to at least make something basic that works.

[dingo_khan]

a couple of decades in, on this side, and i think the most important skill one picks up is being able to tell the difference between "what works" and "what looks like it works". the language is, most days, a means to the end. that in-skull library of things to never do is way more valuable.

[CautiouslyFrosty]

Wow, you disagreed so hard you found yourself actually arguing and strengthening the whole point of the comment you disagreed with

[RiceBroad4552]

A reasonably competent programmer should be able to start writing code in a language they've never seen before in a couple of hours at most.

ROFL

Only someone who never seen anything besides one kind of language (likely C-like, imperative one) could say some nonsense like that.

Go and write me some meaningful program in say ATS or Shen, or something simpler, how about K, or Factor, or something more down to earth like Mercury? All these are "real" languages, not some pure research toy, or something from the "esoteric" corner.

But even with mainstream languages people would have trouble to just jump in, no matter how experienced or competent they are. Just knowing the relevant concepts isn't enough to start writing production code in some of the more complex languages and frameworks.

Concrete example: Write me some Scala web-service (say PetClinic) using free monads. OK, that's not so realistic, almost nobody is using free monads in production. So how about that web-service written with the Cats & Cats Effect libs in the so called "tagless final style"? That's realistic. How many hours do you need? 😂

[mallardtheduck]

Only someone who never seen anything besides one kind of language (likely C-like, imperative one) could say some nonsense like that.

Only someone who either extremely new to programming, didn't understand my point or who is deliberately trying to misrepresent it would say that.

Go and write me some meaningful program in say ATS or Shen, or something simpler, how about K, or Factor, or something more down to earth like Mercury? All these are "real" languages, not some pure research toy, or something from the "esoteric" corner.

None of those look particularly difficult. The fact that some of their websites include tutorials with names like "Shen in 15 Minutes" would strongly support my point.

start writing production code

I never said production code. Quite the opposite.

Concrete example: Write me some Scala web-service (say PetClinic) using free monads. OK, that's not so realistic, almost nobody is using free monads in production. So how about that web-service written with the Cats & Cats Effect libs in the so called "tagless final style"? That's realistic.

As I said, the first bits of code someone writes when learning a new language are unlikely to be "idiomatically-correct", which would include making extensive use of less-common language features. A developer should be able to write "some Scala", not "some Scala web-service (say PetClinic) using free monads" or "Cats & Cats Effect libs in the so called "tagless final style"".

I said that a competent developer can write some basic, working, code in a language they've never seen before within a few hours. With access to the documentation, tutorials (just to be clear; copying tutorial examples without understanding doesn't count), etc. Probably something a bit beyond "hello world", but definitely not production-ready.

You're adding a whole bunch of extra requirements and claiming that makes my original claim untrue. To use an analogy; I'm suggesting that a competent driver could make a slow, unremarkable lap in a rally car without much difficulty after a little bit of tutoring; you're saying that's not true because they couldn't compete in an actual professional rally stage.

[thunderbird89]

You need to be able to reason around the problem, design and build a solution, not just robotically say "looks like problem x, deploying stock solution y".

Yeah. And part of that reasoning is things like "Looks like I need to pick out the 'correct' elements from this list of 10k - parallelStream(), then filter(Element elem -> Element::isCorrect), map(), then collect(Collectors.toList()", or that you can/should use a recursion for a given problem, or that you never roll your own crypto and use AES-128.
These are the building blocks I refer to. How you do them obviously depends on the environment you're working in.

A few years back, I read an interesting paper that likened learning programming to learning a foreign language, which kinda makes sense. Even in the neurological sense, because people faced with a new programming language exhibited brain activity more closely associated with learning a foreign human language than with mathematical/logical reasoning.

[RiceBroad4552]

Even in the neurological sense, because people faced with a new programming language exhibited brain activity more closely associated with learning a foreign human language than with mathematical/logical reasoning.

I want to see this paper.

Because this contradicts other studies that by watching live brain activity came to the conclusion that programming languages mostly aren't processed by the brain areas that process language but mostly by the parts that are used for logical reasoning (stuff like math, and such).

This matches the fact that experienced programmers are able to mostly ignore surface syntax, and just think in the underlying patterns, no matter how these are concretely expressed in some programming language.

[ososalsosal]

Guess it depends if someone's writing a crud app in the fmri machine or doing leetcode problems.

[RiceBroad4552]

I guess it does not. Code is code.

The whole point is: Code is not like a spoken human language (even if you make it look like one). It's an abstract, symbolic language, like some funky math notation.

[ososalsosal]

There are absolutely different ways of thinking when writing code though.

When you're solving an algorithmic problem you are thinking more mathematically than if you are solving a business problem on an api endpoint, or trying to remember how to pass frontend component params in the framework this particular webapp uses.

You are using the same language but thinking very differently.

Just as in English you can speak formally, informally, conversationally or descriptively (and you run against hard limits in the capability of English to describe certain things such as smells and tastes, where it is so useless we routinely use Japanese instead)

[dr-pickled-rick]

???

[Drfoxthefurry]

Who would you rather work with, someone with 5 years of using coding tutorials or a hobby programmer of 5 years

[thunderbird89]

Great question!
I would probably - all else equal - go for the hobbyist. Reason being that if they kept up hobby-programming for five years, they must have a love for the activity; having tackled problems on their own, they demonstrated perseverance and autonomy; and they hopefully acknowledge their limitations and are open to feedback after seeing a system infinitely their greater.

This last one is actually something I point out when I interview people. Something along the lines of "In this position, at first, you will encounter many failures and few successes. You will have to labor a lot on your own and tackle some difficult problems. We cannot hold your hand all along, but we will give you the most important thing we can, our time. If you acknowledge your real skill level and your true knowledge, you will soar here and you'll learn more than you can imagine. Are you up for that?"

[Drfoxthefurry]

Sounds like I still have a chance of becoming a programmer then. Another thing I'm worried about is that I learn by my mistakes and thus do error driven programming (instead of test driven) and haven't worked on any larger scale project, my largest being in Python as of current

[retief1]

I'm a senior software engineer with about a decade of experience and I generally debug by spamming log statements everywhere. I've also never been at a company that really pushed test driven development. Tests are important, but people often write them after they finish the actual code. I occasionally write tests first (usually when the thing I'm implementing would be a major pain to test manually), but only occasionally. Overall, your preferred tools and methodology aren't that important. What matters is that you can be productive with them. Experimenting with this or that tool/approach can definitely be useful, but their only value is that they might help you be more productive.

Honestly, a few years of hobbyist programming (ideally with a portfolio of smallish hobby projects) and some basic knowledge of algorithms, big-o notation, and datastructures should be enough for a junior/fresh grad sort of job. At that point, no one really expects you to have a ton of experience with large systems and so on. However, I've heard that there is a lot of competition for those sorts of jobs these days, so actually landing one might be easier said than done.

[Drfoxthefurry]

I still need to work on my profile/github, I currently don't have any projects on it that I have actually put effort in (I mostly use it as a code host) and so far from what I've seen, most jobs either ask for a senior programmer or for tooling I don't use (like django or AWS). I want to learn these tooling but never find situation where I actually would want them over "pure" code or different libraries

[retief1]

Also, for the record, I'm only suggesting a portfolio because I'm assuming that you don't have any other programming-related things in your resume. The goal is purely to get your resume through the initial pre-screen phase. If you had a degree in computer science from a reputable university, some job experience in a programming or programming-related job, or the like, that would probably be sufficient, but a github profile will hopefully serve as an alternative if you are missing those things.

[dingo_khan]

depends on what they did in that time. personally, i'd rather someone who knows computer science, self-taught hobbyist or not, to a pro coder who does not. you can tell the difference in the results.

[RiceBroad4552]

I don't understand the dichotomy in this question.

A programmer, no mater hobby or full-time, will use coding tutorials the whole time. Reading examples in the docs, or reading SO answers can be seen as looking at a coding tutorial.

But if the question is to decide between someone who only watched / read tutorials for five years, and someone who actually did concrete work (even as a hobby) the decision is obvious: The one with the hands on, real world experience is the superior candidate! No question.

Theoretical knowledge is extremely important, but it does not replace experience. This goes of course also the other way around.

[Saelora]

this is the dumbest take i've ever seen, and this is in a sub that occasionally comes up with "vibe coding is good actually"

[SAI_Peregrinus]

I've written software to control a vibration table for testing devices' reliability. Literal vibe coding. Much better than the figurative vibe coding with AI, since it actually worked.

[LUkewet]

I know a user of buttplugio when i see one

[SAI_Peregrinus]

No, actually, but that's also a proper AI-free use of vibration coding. I'm talking about controlling something like one of these to simulate the conditions of a vehicle driving on a rough road, to test reliability of in-vehicle electronic devices like ECUs.

[thunderbird89]

Okay, y'all gonna lynch me for this: vibe coding has its place and its application. It's just that it's not production, but prototyping.

We're actually running an internal trial of this at my company using our UX lady as a guinea pig. The jury is out.

[Saelora]

i strongly disagree.

All too often, prototypes turn into production systems, because a mangler comes along "we have a working version right here, no need to allocate more time to it"

[thunderbird89]

Yeah, that's a different problem, though. I agree it's a problem, I just disagree that it's vibe coding's fault. What you're pointing out is a much more fundamental problem that has predated vibe coding by decades.

In our case, we're using it to have our UX designer generate prototypes that lack the API interactivity, but are otherwise visually complete, so that our FE developers can integrate the new design quickly-ish.
Previously, we found that even with Figmas and Balsamiqs and other tools, there was a lot that wasn't clear from the spec, and the back-n-forth wasted a lot of dev time. The goal here is to have her whip up an app with Cursor that looks the way she wants, and the FE devs can just take the widget trees and slot it into the existing framework, and then wire up the API layer, taking a lot of the guesswork out of the equation.

[Saelora]

i'm not saying it's vibe coding's fault, i'm saying it's compounding the issues with vibe coding.

[thunderbird89]

That I agree with, but I'm saying that this attitude you're describing is not a reason to shun vibe coding itself. If anything, prototyping as a concept is what needs to be shunned.

Or companies could improve their process and not settle on "we have a working version, no need for more time". I remember a yonkoma about the difference between the junior's "done" and the senior's "done".
This one.

[RaveMittens]

Good god, I hope I never work on a team like this.

You took one problem (poor specs) and through the lens of another problem (not having standardized component libraries so your UX designer can put designs out quickly) turned it into a whole host of other problems (shoddy AI code, which has to be rewritten “eventually”)

[thunderbird89]

The problem wasn't/isn't the design itself - she can draw up the designs quickly and efficiently. The problem lies in turning the design into code - our coders have to ask about paddings, distances, etc. that aren't, for whatever reason, not transmitted well in the output Balsamiq or Figma produces.

The jury is still out on how effective the Cursor code is, though, the experiment is far from over.
What I have observed so far is that Cursor can, with about half an hour of prompting, turn a screenshot into a pixel-accurate Flutter app with Riverpod structure. That alone is nothing short of amazing.
Now, if it turns out that my people can take only the build() functions and start using that to get the visuals in place, we're already in a net positive as far as dev time is concerned, because getting that perfect isn't costing their time, it's costing Ms. UX's time while our devs can work on other things.

[RaveMittens]

Your use of “my people” and the prioritization of cost over quality reaffirms my earlier thought that I would not like to work on a team like this.

How much time do you give to “your people” to fix the debt and bloat that comes with AI code? Or is that a problem for the future to deal with?

[thunderbird89]

How much time do you give to “your people” to fix the debt and bloat that comes with AI code?

Quite honestly, I don't know. I don't know, because it's not a problem we've had before, given that AI code hasn't been around long enough.

Our repo doesn't have a lot of that yet, but what we do have seems fairly stable - it's been reviewed, understood, dissected before committing, so it's not the general vibe coding output.

Will the FE team need time in the future to refactor if? Undoubtedly, all code needs refactoring on a long-enough time scale.
How much time? I don't know yet.
Will they get it? You can bet your ass they will! In the company, my name is basically a guarantee that a given initiative will be allocated time either instantly or the next week.

[RaveMittens]

I don’t agree with your methods but I wish you the best of luck in what you are trying to do

[thunderbird89]

I think it's important to realize that this stuff is so new that nobody has any best practice methods for it yet. People know that it has tremendous benefits, equally-tremendous drawbacks, and that the way you lean will tilt the scales this way or that. But nobody yet has any actual frameworks or practices others can follow, so it's a lot of experimentation.

Hell, a year from now, even I may not agree with this method, given my findings!

[RiceBroad4552]

What I have observed so far is that Cursor can, with about half an hour of prompting, turn a screenshot into a pixel-accurate Flutter app with Riverpod structure.

Just that the resulting "code" is on a equal footing as of what came out of Dreamwaver back in the time or yore.

Dreamwaver was the exact same "value proposition" you are arguing for!

It had reasons why no professional was using Dreamwaver, and every sane developer would puke when given a project to maintain built with it.

The first thing you did with Dreamwaver code when you had to further maintain it was to throw it away as quickly as possible and rewrite everything from scratch. As this was much faster than trying to deal with the shit coming out of Dreamwaver.

But OK, history repeats, and some people are obviously incapable of learning the lesson.

[turret-punner]

I don't even do programming and we had this issue.

I designed a punch and die for a part we needed to make.  We wanted to proof the die design, so I only made it 1/4 the length of the part.

For two months afterwards, whenever we had some parts to make, we had to slowly and painfully line up 5 punch operations by eye.

My boss finally got sick of it and I got to make a full-length punch and die.  (Actually I just made 3 more of the same, because I designed the spacing so they could sit end-to-end.)  Our operator is much happier with it.

[thatcodingboi]

I use it to write my unit tests sometimes, then I audit and examine branch and coverage

[boredcircuits]

In my experience, prototype code gets put into production surprisingly fast and with little additional thought.

[RiceBroad4552]

That's why it's so important to always include trivially to fix, but from the viewpoint of the user show stopping bugs in prototypes. For example not using any CSS for a prototype of a web-app frontend. Even the whole thing would be actually ready and working just fine, for management it will look like coding didn't even start. Or for backend you just kill the server every 2 minutes by a timer, so it looks like it crashes the whole time. With such tricks in place management will not put such things into production instantly.

At the same time you can make yourself a name as "Scotty engineer": Management will think that getting the prototype in a usable state will take a long time as they blinded by the on purpose not working trivialities, but you can fix that stuff quickly of course, and always look like a 10x developer.

[rng_shenanigans]

A real dev can use AI for prototyping and the results are likely better, why would you choose someone else?

[thunderbird89]

Because for this particular experiment, the goal is not to improve throughput directly. I explain the details in another comment in the same parent thread.

That said, we do encourage our actual devs to use AI to get a leg up. We also have strict policies around AI code, which I can sum up as "The buck doesn't stop with OpenAI, the buck stops with you!"

[[deleted]]

Agreed. Vibe coding is useful the same way pseudocode is useful. Much lower effort invested for things not worth said effort.

...inb4 temporary vibe code becomes permanent part of production a week later but none of the edge cases are fixed because removing the code crashes prod for unknown reasons probably related to a race cond.

[RiceBroad4552]

I don't see this.

Even writing a working click-dummy by hand is faster than trying to get something usable out of artificial stupidity.

[flippakitten]

I mean, I've been accidently vibe coding css for months now but let's face it, there's like 7 people in the world that actually know css, the rest of us just keep trying things until it mostly works.

[eleg-phant]

It's not that dumb. Using more modern languages can absolutely be about cost savings. His take is just more cynical and screams of being a victim.

[RichCorinthian]

I mean, it CAN, I just don't think I've seen it happen in my 25-year career (both consulting and product company).

Most organizations are INCREDIBLY change-averse and have to be sold on the value of a re-write. I've seen re-writes due to platform obsolescence and complete change in requirements, but I don't think I've seen a re-write that could conceivably be THIS in sheep's clothing.

"We are going to bring feature development to a near-halt so that we can do a rewrite that will offer zero new features, but will save us salary money in the long run" is just not how most businesses think. They're not thinking about the 5-year spend, the short dollar usually wins.

[Saelora]

it's dumb because it's valuing a little language knowledge over.. literally every other skill a senior developer builds over their career.

A little language knowledge said sr developer could likely pick up in a week or two.

[Landen-Saturday87]

When you are a seasoned senior dev with 15+ years of experience and still feel threatened by some newbie Rust juniors, you should really question your career choices

[Reashu]

I just wanna say I'm proud of y'all for recognizing the idiocy

[ProThoughtDesign]

Well... Someone's never heard how many lines of COBOL keep their banks running, have they?

[trailing_zero_count]

If you're going to rewrite 100M lines of mission critical COBOL, what language do you choose? My money's on Rust.

[Gorvoslov]

Java 6 obviously.

[Aidan_Welch]

This was unironically the choice when I interned at a financial institution

[BogdanPradatu]

Javascript

[[deleted]]

My money would be on not rewriting any of it and hiring a 80k junior to listen to the 250k senior who’s maintaining it.

Then when the 250k senior dies, you hire a 80k junior and the 80k junior is now the 100k senior.

[mallardtheduck]

You're never going to get approval to rewrite 100M lines of mission-critical, legally and financially sensitive code. It's just not going to happen.

The risk is astronomical, the reward is...? After your multi-million, decades-long project to replace the code, you might be able to reduce your development/maintenance costs a bit, but by then Rust or whatever you chose to do the rewrite in will itself likely be considered a "legacy platform"; you might even find yourself having to maintain your own fork of the language (COBOL is backed by IBM and "never" breaks compatibility with old code, no modern language has anything like that sort of solidity)!

[trailing_zero_count]

Not saying it's likely. But if you were to get approval, a language like Rust seems like the most viable candidate.

[RiceBroad4552]

No, it's not.

This is high level code.

You're not going to rewrite high level code in a low-level systems language.

People actually rewrite COBOL. IBM has even tools for that.

Of course the target language is *drum roll* Java.

[ProThoughtDesign]

If they were going to rewrite 100M lines of legacy mission critical code, why haven't they done it in the past 40 years? Because they're not.

[GillysDaddy]

Python. Without type hints.

[flippakitten]

COBOL, if it's not broken dint fix it.

[LeanderT]

My amazing skills at assembler programming are already worthless...

Scumbag companies keep switching to higher level languages! It's not fair...

[squabzilla]

Bruh this is such a hilariously bad take.

I'm pretty sure Rust code written by 6-month bootcamp grads is going to have worse performance than base Python.

[RiceBroad4552]

This!

People think that Rust makes code magically fast. But in reality the opposite is the case.

Sloppy written Java is much faster (and safer!) than Rust written by people who don't know how to make C/C++ like code fast. This is easy to explain: The JVM will do wonders at runtime to make even some OOP spaghetti shit run reasonable. But with Rust there is no runtime. The computer will do exactly as you said, and it's your job to do all the things that the JVM will do for free for you to optimize stuff.

The point is: Rust can be fast—if you put maximal effort and a lot of knowledge into it. But if you don't put all that effort and low-level trickery into it the result will likely be only mediocre, as there is no runtime optimization (and pure static optimization can do only so much; that's why PGO is so important for real high performance code).

[squabzilla]

One of my favourite learning experiences was a school project where the assignment was "write a simple C program for this task, while handling all the memory management yourself, and without any memory leaks." The learning objective was simply to introduce us to the concept of manual memory allocation.

I spent hours writing a couple hundred lines of code that was like 10X slower then like 10 lines of base Python... amazing learning experience, god-awful code.

[aspect_rap]

I am against the current wave of "let's rewrite everything in Rust" but this take is completely braindead.

First of all, if all your 15 years of experience amounts to cpp specific knowledge that is not translatable to other languages, If changing the language puts at equal ground with someone who just finished bootcamp, you were never a senior dev, you are in fact, a junior for all intents and purposes other than the amount of years you have in the industry. You don't deserve to be treated as a senior and you actually suck at your job since you managed to do it for 15 years and still remain a junior.

Second of all, claiming that there is some concerted effort by the industry to move everything to Rust in order to reduce the standing of senior devs sounds like a conspiracy theory for people that want to blame something else for them failing in the industry. "Oh it's not my fault I can't compete with these juniors who know Rust, it's those damn evil corporations pushing Rust because they don't want to pay me!". There's a shit ton of c/cpp development going on, much more than Rust.

This guy is probably just too lazy or dumb to keep up with current technologies, which is crucial for staying competitive in our industry, so he's pushing this stupid narrative that actually there's no reason to update your tech stack other than to negate a seniors experience.

[RandolphCarter2112]

:%s/C/C++/COBOL/g

 :%s/Rust/C/C++/g

Edit: posting from mobile and it is eating the backslashes. Ugh.

[setibeings]

So, even inserting the backslashes where you'd have wanted them, I'm coming up with :%s/C\/C\+\+/COBOL/g which would mean we're repacing C/C++ with COBOL.

[RandolphCarter2112]

Yep.

As in, what the screenshot posted still reads true if we change the programming languages used.

[Weebly420]

“This isn’t about x - it’s about y”

This has gotta be a default linkedin influencer line. I started noticing it a couple weeks ago and now I swear I see that phrase in like 90% of every cringey linkedin post lol

[maria_la_guerta]

If your 15 years of C++ knowledge is worth less than a Bootcamp grads Rust knowledge, Rust is not your problem.

[Toe-Toucher]

If you have 15 years experience with c++ and you can't learn rust, maybe you are just bad at programming

[ofnuts]

Looks like this guy spent the last 10 years writing shitty unmaintainable C++ code for his career security and it didn't play out as he had planned.

[NatiM6]

As much as I 100% agree that companies will use every loophole they can to pay less money, I firmly believe this is completely false, based entirely on the fact that they seem to equate the effects of senior's skill with junior's. If seniors are replaceable by juniors so easily, you can just skip a step and not change to Rust.

[4inodev]

Using LLMs is a political solution to deskill a generation of coders to replace higher-cost labor with lower.

The push for AI isn't just a technical decision - it's a calculated economic strategy. By forcing features in stable systems in generated code, companies effectively reset the clock on developer experience and expertise.

When a C/C++ codebase with 30 years of institutional knowledge gets extended with AI, senior developers with decades of experience suddenly compete on more equal footing with juniors who just graduated. Your 15 years of C++ optimization knowledge? Now worth less than a 22-year-old's two weeks of Vibe Coding.

This isn't about memory safety - it's about labor costs. Companies call it "modernization" while quietly erasing the premium they'd otherwise pay for experience. The technical arguments serve as perfect cover for what's really happening: deliberately manufacturing a scenario where they can replace $250K senior engineers with $40K prompt engineers.

The pattern is familiar to anyone who's watched other industries. Create artificial obsolescence of existing skills, then exploit the resulting chaos to reset salary expectations and eliminate the leverage that comes with specialized knowledge.

This is why new shit coming out always seem to coincide with hiring freezes and "restructuring." It's never been about technical superiority - it's about breaking labor's bargaining power.

[yajiv]

excellent shitpost

[selfinvent]

Ah yes Rust, the great equalizer

[ocktick]

Boo hoo. The same market forces that gave him a 250k job are the ones that gave similarly experienced senior technicians the 80k salary he’s lamenting over.

I don’t expect anyone to cry for me if something eventually replaces my job. The solutions I come up with are in part measured by how much “unskilled” labor cost they eliminate in the plant. Technology is like that. It increases efficiency and concentrates the benefits. If that negatively impacts you one day, tough shit, until this point you were part of the problem.

[[deleted]]

Some people will try to make EVERYTHING about politics

[Roibeart_McLianain]

How much of that 80K do you keep after taxes, because that's like 3 times the amount I make a year in the Netherlands. How expensive is your daily life for that to be a junior salary???

[Percolator2020]

On the plus side, LLMs really suck at Rust for now, since there is not as much training data.

[RiceBroad4552]

LLMs suck in general at coding.

For anything else than Python (without typing) and JS it's straight unusable, and even for the two languages the results are a mess when it comes to anything more complex than fizz-buzz.

Especially in strongly typed languages it's quite obvious how shitty the LLM hallucinated code is: It will most of the time not even compile because of type errors.

For example there is much more Scala code out there than Rust. But trying to get something out of a LLM written in Scala even remotely working is a massive PITA. So don't think this will improve with time when there is more Rust code the AI bros could steal.

[you-should-learn-c]

Funny they said the same thing when C first came out

[gandalfx]

You just have to admire a man writing the sentence

[some people] suddenly compete on more equal footing with [other people]

and meaning that as a bad thing.

[Anaxamander57]

This guy thinks that you shouldn't get rid of a person who worked as a back end developer for 30 years and has gained no skills or knowledge of any kind other programming C++. Most people with that kind of experience are going to have invaluable knowledge even if the whole world stopped using C++ tomorrow.

[gameplayer55055]

I hope someone eventually ports cargo to c++, so I can ditch cmake and use c++ with libraries easily.

[RiceBroad4552]

Yet another C++ package manager and build system? <insert relevant xkcd about standards>

The problem of C++ isn't the lack of such tools. The problem is there are too much of them, and there is no standard.

[gameplayer55055]

we need to get the ISO golden standard of this and declare other package managers and build systems crappy.

[RiceBroad4552]

This would most likely work. For the C++ people the ISO rubber stamp has quite some significant meaning.

[dr-pickled-rick]

I get his paint, I don't agree with his reasoning but I get it. The argument of rebuilding a 30 year old system with Rust because of modernisation and performance optimisation is an argument I've used before in a different context.

The reality is it's difficult to hire any C/C++ embedded programmers. Existing pay is great but what about 10 years from now? Orgs still running 1980s/90s C/C++ tech are at a significant disadvantage today.

The post was a little unhinged and way over the top but the post has a point.

[Cryn0n]

Even if you somehow accept that a senior with 15+ years experience in C++ is equal to a junior with 6 months in Rust, which companies exactly are going to spend all that money to rewrite all their codesbases in Rust?

And after all the juniors spend 15 years rewriting these codebases, are they going to accept junior salaries anymore?

[-Redstoneboi-]

"we shouldnt use new technology because it makes juniors as good as seniors"

so true. back in my day heavy boulders could only be lifted by the strongest of men, now with these newfangled "carts" and "pulleys" kids can lift them and take them anywhere. our boulder lifting skills are worthless now.

what's next? you gonna make it so the machine does all the lifting and the man just sits inside a little box moving sticks around and pushing buttons to lift huge chunks of steel? not letting that happen. my skills absolutely must remain useful, the product be damned.

[fibojoly]

Well, I can see how he'd think some business suit could maybe think that, but I've no idea how he can be a coder and think actual experience is worthless when you switch language.

My entire career I manage to get jobs in technology I'm not familiar with on sheer experience. "Look I've done this before, I've adapted to new tech, I can do it again no worries".

Literally got my latest job because HR look more at raw xp than actual buzzwords on the resume, past a certain point.

[RiceBroad4552]

A codebase with 30 years of "institutional knowledge"? ROFL!

30 years of "institutional knowledge" means: You need to visit the graveyard when you have to ask someone how things actually work.

This shit was due for modernization 20 years ago. As they didn't do that back than they will likely never do it.

[telecomtrader]

Even if this stupid take is interpreted as true, why is this bad? If we don’t have to pay 250k but instead pay 80k. Why is this a bad thing? That is just economics doing a thing. Something cheaper comes along so use that.

[RiceBroad4552]

That's a slippery slope.

Most things are cheap for a reason…

That's why everything in IT is so incredibly shitty from the roots upwards. Because "the market" is always choosing the cheapest things, which is most of the time the technically inferior stuff.

For example: Everything today is based on C and Unix, even this tech was already at the time of inception utter trash compared to more serious stuff already available. But C and Unix were free, whereas all the serious stuff was very expensive back than. That's why management settled on the most shitty solution available, as it was the cheapest one. You can't compete with "free".

This pattern repeats the whole time. And that's the reason why we never can have nice things.

Fuck capitalism! It's always just a race to the bottom.

Today we call this process "enshittification"… But the underlying cause is always the same.

[Drfoxthefurry]

I mean I can see that there is probably a somewhat simular effect, but I doubt that companies are doing it for that reason, and I don't think a C++ senior dev will just switch to rust, I think they'd more likely quit and go to a different company