I dunno, I have a Framework laptop and had a keyboard issue with it. It still worked, but one of the keys didn’t register well. So they sent me a new keyboard and I sent them back the old one after I’d swapped it. Not a single day was I without my laptop, which sounds quite unlikely compared to other laptop brands and the support you get (or not) with those. No buyer’s remorse here.

I can take this one: Because he doesn’t actually care about creating anything of value. If he truly believed in it, you’re right, Twitter or even Tesla’s software engineers would be on the chopping block and he’d replace them with AI as soon as he can. But he doesn’t.

He knows this is a longshot. Most likely to fail, but very profitable on the near-impossible chance that it works. But he doesn’t care even if the odds are truly impossible. Because this is an investment opportunity, so people will throw money his way, no matter what the odds.

People assume he’s an idiot, and he is. But he’s not stupid, at least not in every way. He certainly has a skill for separating others from their money, which he happily takes advantage of.

Don’t tell that to the kids in Finland 😉

https://santaclausvillage.info/activities/santa-claus-main-post-office/

That’s fair, although technically you could catch SIGSEGV and release resources that way too.

Also, given that resources will be reclaimed by the OS regardless of which kind of crash we’re talking about, the effective difference is usually (but not always) negligible.

Either way, no user would consider a panic!() to be not a crash because destructors ran. And most developers don’t either.

“An abrupt exit”, more commonly known as a “crash”.

If you’re going to argue that an exit through panic!() is not a crash, I will argue that your definition of a crash is just an abrupt exit initiated by the OS. In other words, there’s no meaningful distinction as the result is the same.

I don’t understand why you’re getting downvoted. While I don’t share your conviction, I do admit it’s certainly a possibility.

The advantage of doing things that way is that code becomes much more portable. We may finally reach the goal of “write once, run anywhere”, because the AI may write all the platform specific code.

It does make a big assumption that the AI output is reliable enough though. At times people will want to tweak the output, so how are they gonna go about that? Maybe if the language is based on Markdown, you can inject snippets of code where necessary. But if you have to do that too often, such a language will lose its appeal.

There’s a lot of unknowns, but I see why it’s a tempting idea.

You know, as a full-time Linux user, I think I rather have game developers continue to create Windows executables.

Unlike most software, games have a tendency to be released, then supported for one or two years, and then abandoned. But meanwhile, operating systems and libraries move on.

If you have a native Linux build of a game from 10 years ago, good luck trying to run it on your modern system. With Windows builds, using Wine or Proton, you actually have better chances running games from 10 or even 20 years ago.

Meanwhile, thanks to Valve’s efforts, Windows builds have incentive to target Vulkan, they’re getting tested on Linux. That’s what we should focus on IMO, because those things make games better supported on Linux. Which platform the binary is compiled for is an implementation detail… and Win32 is actually the more stable target.

tsc is (very) slow and there are also no convenient ways to interact with it from Rust.

So it saves a lot development and CI time to roll our own. The downside is that our inference still isn’t as good as tsc of course, but we’re hopeful the community can help us get very close at least.

Heh, I agree with everything you said, but I’m afraid such a framework is impossible to create, let alone implement. It’s impossible to foresee the infinite possibilities for people to screw themselves through bad decisions, so all you’d create is a lot of bureaucracy to still end up in the same place.

That’s still a very major achievement! Do I understand correctly this means all target architectures supported by GCC are now unlocked for Rust too?

It’s that the compiler doesn’t help you with preventing race conditions. This makes some problems so hard to solve in C that C programmers simply stay away from attempting it, because they fear the complexity involved.

It’s a variation of the same theme: Maybe a C programmer could do it too, given infinite time and skill. But in practice it’s often not feasible.

I’m not saying you can’t, but it’s a lot more work to use such solutions, to say nothing about their quality compared to std solutions in other languages.

And it’s also just one example. If we bring multi-threading into it, we’re opening another can of worms where C doesn’t particularly shine.

I would argue that because C is so hard to program in, even the claim to machine efficiency is arguable. Yes, if you have infinite time for implementation, then C is among the most efficient, but then the same applies to C++, Rust and Zig too, because with infinite time any artificial hurdle can be cleared by the programmer.

In practice however, programmers have limited time. That means they need to use the tools of the language to save themselves time. Languages with higher levels of abstraction make it easier, not harder, to reach high performance, assuming the abstractions don’t provide too much overhead. C++, Rust and Zig all apply in this domain.

An example is the situation where you need a hash map or B-Tree map to implement efficient lookups. The languages with higher abstraction give you reusable, high performance options. The C programmer will need to either roll his own, which may not be an option if time Is limited, or choose a lower-performance alternative.

Of course, but it needn’t be black and white. You can also diversify, make yourself less reliant on a single platform. And by doing so, enable your audience to follow you elsewhere. Or diversify into different activities altogether. And when it’s no longer half your income on the line, then switch.

But doing nothing and saying, “but half my income!”? That’s not only a choice, but also complacency.

Great points, except:

People can’t leave for anything smaller.

They can and some do. It’s still a choice.

Ah yes, then we are in agreement. I thought we were talking about unintentionally arriving at the same implementation after looking at the original, which is where the discussion started.

Because coming up with the same implementation independently is legal, while copying someone else’s implementation isn’t. Which method you used to arrive at your implementation can be difficult to prove either way, which is why it’s important for implementors to be able to say they never looked at the original. It’s a legal defence, in case you ever need to stand in front of a judge or jury who will question how you arrived at yours.

Maybe not the best example then, but not the only example. If you unintentionally create something that resembles the original too much you may still become liable. It’s hard to draw the line, which is why many in such a position would prefer to be safe rather than sorry.

It’s a gray area, legally. What you say is theoretically correct, but there’s practical issues once you’ve looked at the code that will open you up to legal liability anyway.

For instance, what if you need a utility function during your reimplementation for which there is really only one obvious implementation? You can no longer claim to have come up with it by yourself.

I doubt the FSF would sue over it, but companies are known to avoid the risk.

I think it’s the latter. I once had to take care of a sick friend who was pretty much puking her guts out. Her moans sounded arousing. Of course she wasn’t intentionally doing that, it’s just our own male brains playing tricks on us.