zlacker

>but it’s bad at rust

I have to say, my ability to learn Rust was massively accelerated via LLMs. I highly recommend them for learning a new skill. I feel I'm roughly at the point (largely sans LLMs) now where I can be nearly as productive in Rust as Python. +1 to RustRover as well, which I strongly prefer to any other IDE.

>>leoh+(OP)
Me too -- actually, I'd say that the LLMs I use these days (Sonnet 4 and GPT4.1, o4, etc) are pretty good at rust.

>>leoh+(OP)
I have to say, my ability to learn Rust was massively accelerated via LLMs.

How would you know?

If you didn't know Rust already, how would you know the LLM was teaching you the right things and the best way to do things?

Just because it compiles doesn't mean it works. The world is full of bad, buggy, insecure, poor code that compiles.

>>reaper+13
No only this, but I would challenge the OP to see if he really knows Rust but turning off LLM and see “how much you truly know”.

This is akin to be on tutorial hell and you “know the language “

>>leoh+(OP)
How much of that proficiency remains once you switch it off?

>>leoh+(OP)
It is not bad at rust. I don't think I could even function well as a Rust programmer without chatgpt and now Cursor. It removes a lot of the burden of remembering how to write generic code and fixing borrow checking stuff. I can just write a generic function with tons of syntax errors and then tell cursor to fix it.

>>reaper+13
I've been writing Rust code in production for 4+ years, and I can write Rust pretty well, and I've learned a lot from using chatgpt and co-pilot/cursor.

In particular, it helped me write my first generic functions and macros, two things that were pretty intimidating to try and get into.

>>ezst+96
Quite a lot, but hey, feel free to put me to the test

>>metalt+v5
Well, I coded at Google (in addition to other places) for over 10 years without LLMs in several languages and I feel like I’m about at par with Rust as I was with those languages. I’m open to being humbled, which I have felt by LLMs and ofc other folks — “good” is subjective.

>>reaper+13
How does anyone self learning know they're learning the "right things and the best way to do things"? By putting the stuff they've learned into practice and putting it up against the real world. How many Rust tutorials are out there that teach things incorrectly, non-idomatically or just inefficiently? How does anyone not already an expert know except by trying it out?

>>empath+H9
100%. Using an LLM to thoughtfully craft my first useful macro felt like a super-power.

>>leoh+(OP)
The interesting question is: is it really that bad at Rust, or does Rust's strict compiler just catch more errors which remain hidden in, let us say, Go? The usual hand-waving response is that developers should write more tests instead - as if a boring and tedious task such as writing tests will not be passed to LLM.