The Rust project puts out an article about how they're listening to their community https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/03/20/rust-challenges/
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@cwebber yeah uh, the general consensus within the project is very LLM-negative, but a vocal minority has been extremely LLM-positive, which is why the project only has a stopgap anti-slop-PR measure until a larger policy is written
it really feels like some major shifts are going to have to happen
@clarfonthey @cwebber Sounds like a description of software in general - there's only a tiny sliver of people who are positive about LLMs but don't say anything
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@SRAZKVT I've bounced off of learning Rust from a technical standpoint a few times now, what's the deal with the community? Maybe I'll have to write it off entirely.
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The Rust project puts out an article about how they're listening to their community https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/03/20/rust-challenges/
Except it turns out that article was drafted by an LLM https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1rz15t3/what_we_heard_about_rusts_challenges_and_how_we/obiwu24/
They claim nearly every line was rewritten by a human but I'm not sure how you could send a worse signal to your community about how much you aren't listening than having an LLM draft a post saying we're really listening, honest
@cwebber Fuck. This just sucks so much.
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The Rust project puts out an article about how they're listening to their community https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/03/20/rust-challenges/
Except it turns out that article was drafted by an LLM https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1rz15t3/what_we_heard_about_rusts_challenges_and_how_we/obiwu24/
They claim nearly every line was rewritten by a human but I'm not sure how you could send a worse signal to your community about how much you aren't listening than having an LLM draft a post saying we're really listening, honest
@cwebber ugh, as someone who loves the rust programming language, it's been so depressing to see everything around it progressively get worse
there are many reasons why i love rust:
- having a haskell-like type system is super nice
- mutable xor shared is a very good idea
- the borrow checker is great to work and promotes having simple ownership graphs
- have a crate as the basic compilation unit, rather than a rust file, is a very sane trade-off, and i like it more than having per-file compilation units
- the culture around correctness is very nice
- rustfmt creating a very consistent way to use rust
- embracing inclusivity from the start
there is a reason why i have "rust is my favorite dirty haskell" on my profile
but then, there are a lot of things which are very bad:
- being co-opted by corporations very quickly
- embracing github and discord
- no stance against proprietary software
- no stance against centralization
- crates.io is very centralized and does not play well with distribution package managers
- cargo being the one blessed build tool, rather than embracing variety
- rust applications being annoying to package properly in distributions
seeing people who i used to respect a lot, like fasterthanlime[0][1] and niko matsakis[2][3][4] embracing the slop machines has also been very depressing
it really makes me look more in the direction of embracing c and zig, but those have their own issues
there is a lot to like about zig, and the project itself seems to have a moral compass[5]. the compiler has a stance against llms and moved away from github. sadly the zig ecosystem does not seem to share this stance. for example ghostty[6] embraces it
0: ewie.online/posts/20260214-arborium-is-ai-slopw/
1: github.com/facet-rs/facet/tree/main/.claude
2: github.com/nikomatsakis/zulook
3: github.com/nikomatsakis/retcon/tree/main/.claude
4: github.com/nikomatsakis/dada/tree/main/.claude
5: codeberg.org/ziglang/zig#strict-no-llm-no-ai-policy
6: github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/blob/main/AI_POLICY.md#ai-is-welcome-here -
@cwebber ugh, as someone who loves the rust programming language, it's been so depressing to see everything around it progressively get worse
there are many reasons why i love rust:
- having a haskell-like type system is super nice
- mutable xor shared is a very good idea
- the borrow checker is great to work and promotes having simple ownership graphs
- have a crate as the basic compilation unit, rather than a rust file, is a very sane trade-off, and i like it more than having per-file compilation units
- the culture around correctness is very nice
- rustfmt creating a very consistent way to use rust
- embracing inclusivity from the start
there is a reason why i have "rust is my favorite dirty haskell" on my profile
but then, there are a lot of things which are very bad:
- being co-opted by corporations very quickly
- embracing github and discord
- no stance against proprietary software
- no stance against centralization
- crates.io is very centralized and does not play well with distribution package managers
- cargo being the one blessed build tool, rather than embracing variety
- rust applications being annoying to package properly in distributions
seeing people who i used to respect a lot, like fasterthanlime[0][1] and niko matsakis[2][3][4] embracing the slop machines has also been very depressing
it really makes me look more in the direction of embracing c and zig, but those have their own issues
there is a lot to like about zig, and the project itself seems to have a moral compass[5]. the compiler has a stance against llms and moved away from github. sadly the zig ecosystem does not seem to share this stance. for example ghostty[6] embraces it
0: ewie.online/posts/20260214-arborium-is-ai-slopw/
1: github.com/facet-rs/facet/tree/main/.claude
2: github.com/nikomatsakis/zulook
3: github.com/nikomatsakis/retcon/tree/main/.claude
4: github.com/nikomatsakis/dada/tree/main/.claude
5: codeberg.org/ziglang/zig#strict-no-llm-no-ai-policy
6: github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/blob/main/AI_POLICY.md#ai-is-welcome-here -
@mi @lumi @cwebber
https://mesonbuild.com/Rust.html
https://mesonbuild.com/Wrap-dependency-system-manual.html
:3
it's still a pain to do because the tooling expects the cargo workflow, so e.g., system provided crates won't ever be a simple thing until rustc fixes itself
so this would be more of a band-aid than a final solution -
The Rust project puts out an article about how they're listening to their community https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/03/20/rust-challenges/
Except it turns out that article was drafted by an LLM https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1rz15t3/what_we_heard_about_rusts_challenges_and_how_we/obiwu24/
They claim nearly every line was rewritten by a human but I'm not sure how you could send a worse signal to your community about how much you aren't listening than having an LLM draft a post saying we're really listening, honest
Splendidly ironic. Muppets.
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The Rust project puts out an article about how they're listening to their community https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/03/20/rust-challenges/
Except it turns out that article was drafted by an LLM https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1rz15t3/what_we_heard_about_rusts_challenges_and_how_we/obiwu24/
They claim nearly every line was rewritten by a human but I'm not sure how you could send a worse signal to your community about how much you aren't listening than having an LLM draft a post saying we're really listening, honest
@cwebber ha ha how apropos for our age
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The Rust project puts out an article about how they're listening to their community https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/03/20/rust-challenges/
Except it turns out that article was drafted by an LLM https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1rz15t3/what_we_heard_about_rusts_challenges_and_how_we/obiwu24/
They claim nearly every line was rewritten by a human but I'm not sure how you could send a worse signal to your community about how much you aren't listening than having an LLM draft a post saying we're really listening, honest
@cwebber But... I just want to... project my inadequacies onto an artificial medium, so I can feel more organically viable...
Yours,
'Unbridled' Capitalism -
The Rust project puts out an article about how they're listening to their community https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/03/20/rust-challenges/
Except it turns out that article was drafted by an LLM https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1rz15t3/what_we_heard_about_rusts_challenges_and_how_we/obiwu24/
They claim nearly every line was rewritten by a human but I'm not sure how you could send a worse signal to your community about how much you aren't listening than having an LLM draft a post saying we're really listening, honest
@cwebber Ah fun, and the moment I get LLM vibes I can't help but have my eyes glaze over and I can't ready anymore...
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The Rust project puts out an article about how they're listening to their community https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/03/20/rust-challenges/
Except it turns out that article was drafted by an LLM https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1rz15t3/what_we_heard_about_rusts_challenges_and_how_we/obiwu24/
They claim nearly every line was rewritten by a human but I'm not sure how you could send a worse signal to your community about how much you aren't listening than having an LLM draft a post saying we're really listening, honest
@cwebber
> These aren't beginner problems that go away—they're fundamental friction points that manifest differently as developers grow.Blah
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@mi @lumi @cwebber
https://mesonbuild.com/Rust.html
https://mesonbuild.com/Wrap-dependency-system-manual.html
:3
it's still a pain to do because the tooling expects the cargo workflow, so e.g., system provided crates won't ever be a simple thing until rustc fixes itself
so this would be more of a band-aid than a final solution -
@duke_of_germany @kirtai @cwebber Yeah, would be interested as well.
Did some digging and all I can find is that a few years ago some people were really pissed off that the Rust team was putting LGBTQ+ support stuff on the mascot in discord and expressing solidarity for Iranian protestors and human rights. They seem to do this quite unashamedly, saying they don't really care if people don't want them to be political or whatever because writing tech is a political act.
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@cwebber ugh, as someone who loves the rust programming language, it's been so depressing to see everything around it progressively get worse
there are many reasons why i love rust:
- having a haskell-like type system is super nice
- mutable xor shared is a very good idea
- the borrow checker is great to work and promotes having simple ownership graphs
- have a crate as the basic compilation unit, rather than a rust file, is a very sane trade-off, and i like it more than having per-file compilation units
- the culture around correctness is very nice
- rustfmt creating a very consistent way to use rust
- embracing inclusivity from the start
there is a reason why i have "rust is my favorite dirty haskell" on my profile
but then, there are a lot of things which are very bad:
- being co-opted by corporations very quickly
- embracing github and discord
- no stance against proprietary software
- no stance against centralization
- crates.io is very centralized and does not play well with distribution package managers
- cargo being the one blessed build tool, rather than embracing variety
- rust applications being annoying to package properly in distributions
seeing people who i used to respect a lot, like fasterthanlime[0][1] and niko matsakis[2][3][4] embracing the slop machines has also been very depressing
it really makes me look more in the direction of embracing c and zig, but those have their own issues
there is a lot to like about zig, and the project itself seems to have a moral compass[5]. the compiler has a stance against llms and moved away from github. sadly the zig ecosystem does not seem to share this stance. for example ghostty[6] embraces it
0: ewie.online/posts/20260214-arborium-is-ai-slopw/
1: github.com/facet-rs/facet/tree/main/.claude
2: github.com/nikomatsakis/zulook
3: github.com/nikomatsakis/retcon/tree/main/.claude
4: github.com/nikomatsakis/dada/tree/main/.claude
5: codeberg.org/ziglang/zig#strict-no-llm-no-ai-policy
6: github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/blob/main/AI_POLICY.md#ai-is-welcome-here
