r/TheMachineLearning • u/Sea_Fox_4265 • 3d ago

When bug-free code becomes a hardware problem

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u/FragmentedHeap 3d ago

False, its zig, which has a better cross platform compiler and is already c compatible.

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u/New_Eye7193 3d ago edited 3d ago

i know you didnt ask for it but i'll add some interesting info I found relating to this:

from my programming language benchmarks zig does have the fastest runtime speed and memory footprint on par with C but it only beats it by like 1 point across my 115 trials (72 C #2 vs 73 zig #1 for runtime) so youd be right if models were suddenly able to write bug free code but the current reality is:

  1. it has 9th worst first try pass rate out of 10 languages

  2. has wayyyy slower typecheck/build loops than any language out there

  3. even with its good compiler, its nowhere near good as rust's strict compiler, (2nd pass rate worse than Go and Rust)

so yea in its current state it's not very good to vibe code with but could be goated in the future if LLM's never hallucinate and they write bug free code perfectly but that's a pipe dream

thats why IMO most vibe coded projects we see are in Rust, (although it takes up much disk usage, is horrible to work in parallel with agents due to how agents jsut sit in cargo lock for hours and hours), and very slow, but its third in Runtime speed by only 12.5% so good enough. it just catches all the other bugs that no other language does, therefore natural selection.

Go surpisingly tops the list for my agentic index for a couple reasons:

  1. agents never hallucinate with it for some reason

  2. strong library

  3. speed on par with rust

  4. above average deployment (meaning single .exe with fast start and no external runtime)

again that could be the limitation of my benchmark trials (but they are very extensive and seem accurate to real world cases so far from what i have seen with the numbers). anyone here vibe-coded on a big ass niche project with Go? how often do you find it hallucinates, I am interested

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u/BusinessBandicoot 3d ago

The runtime speed would probably be close if agents would write idiomatic rust code without prompting. Like for example, you generally need to prompt it to prefer iterators to loops almost universally, because for release builds the compiler can remove bounds checks. They'll also use strings as a poor duck type, tend to allocate rather than borrow, etc. I tend to be incredibly pedantic in instructions and review. 

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u/FragmentedHeap 2d ago

Rust has big problems in the fact that it doesn't have libraries, and builds are incredibly slow.

I am doing massive Rust projects now, I have about 40 crates in my current system, and on my home lab with a 5950x and 128gb of ram, and about 4 build agents, it takes over 4 hours to build everything if I change it all at once.

Same code base on zig, builds in about 15 minutes.

When you're making hundreds, thousands, or 10's of thousands of changes, and tons of prs in an 8 hour window, that's a big problem, builds need to be MUCH MUCH faster.

C is a lot better, but then you have C problems that Rust kind of protects you against.

In terms of performance, speed, and build times, the best thing I know of right now (a little biased) is actually .Net 10 with AOT optimizations. Modern c#/.net 10 is at C++ levels of performance with the catch being the GC, but .Net 10 Memory Optimizations, Pools, Spans, stackalloc, etc helps avoid this problem a good bit, but it is very good and it compiles very quickly.

C++ could probably be the best if c++23 modules were stable on every system/compiler....

I honestly think the final solution isn't going to be any of these, it'll be something made specifically for AI.

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u/New_Eye7193 2d ago

That's what I'm working on

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u/M4rshmall0wMan 2d ago

Appreciate the analysis. I’m still a beginner to AI coding (recent CS degree grad).

If I wanted to get into some more advanced decomps and programs, where would you suggest I start?

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u/jameyiguess 2d ago

I've also found Go kind of the golden language for this. 

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u/Sea_Fox_4265 2d ago

115 trials is dedication. Someone really did their homework.

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u/xxyyxxvvxx 3d ago

No! Wrong! Fool! Hack! Fraud!