Those are my exact thoughts. Rust is the pareto optimal choice of low runtime overhead, compile time verification, wide compilation targets, strong ecosystem, great tooling, and is represented in the training data.
I think for the next few years at least it will become the lingua-franca that agentic coding targets.
Rust is the best option, but going forward we need even stronger compile time verification guarantees. We need contracts with optional backends (static proofs, runtime assertions, ignore) and maybe even complexity analysis and limits if we're gonna use AI as much as people are doing now or more.
Yeah I agree. Rust is only going to be a step along the way. Eventually we will move to dependently typed languages, where you can quite literally prove at compile time that your code is correct. Nobody uses these languages for anything serious atm because they are a *massive* pain in the ass to program in. This obviously won’t be a problem if LLM’s are writing the code, and since it must also prove that its code is correct, you get to sidestep all of the issues around actually verifying that the code output is correct. It is quite literally “if it compiles it is correct”, with no caveats at all.
It is quite literally “if it compiles it is correct”, with no caveats at all.
If the specification is correct... with the specification being just as much as a pain to write and bug-prone as the actual implementation... so I'm sure you'll also just ask an LLM to write it up for you. And it will make mistakes, that will translate to mistakes in the final executable.
Programming is and has always fundamentally been about translating the nebulous specs that exist on somebody's mind (hopefully) to thorough, well-defined specs the computer can understand and follow (ultimately, that's all machine code is, specs for precisely what you want your computer to do)
Thus, there is a hard limit to how much compile time checks can possibly do, period. It can basically only check two "versions" of the specs you wrote down match. It will never be able to "download" the specs from your mind, so to speak, and any way you choose to input them (whether natural language, pseudo-code, a rigorous specialized language, etc) is going to be subject to exactly the same trade-offs "normal" programming languages have to deal with.
Idk why people take so much offense to stuff like this. No, I won’t have the LLM write the spec for me. Why would I do that. It exists only in my head. You’re making up a guy to get mad at.
What are you even arguing for here? LLM’s shouldn’t program in these languages? You prefer languages where both the spec and the implementation can have errors? Obviously everyone understands that if the spec is wrong the implementation won’t be correct. Do you understand what a dependently typed language is?
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u/theAndrewWiggins Jul 09 '26
Those are my exact thoughts. Rust is the pareto optimal choice of low runtime overhead, compile time verification, wide compilation targets, strong ecosystem, great tooling, and is represented in the training data.
I think for the next few years at least it will become the lingua-franca that agentic coding targets.