Programming language designer Niko Matsakis reflects on the rise of LLMs and their implications for programming and language design. Having started coding in fifth grade on an x86 machine running at 5MHz, he notes that for decades the basic act of entering code into a file stayed remarkably constant, until recent years when everything turned on its head. That shift has been both exciting and disorienting, raising questions about the future relevance of programming skills and language design.
His conclusion is that humans still have a role in programming, language design remains relevant, and Rust is a particularly good fit for agentic development. He argues that Rust's popularity is growing rapidly in this era, citing data showing that Meta engineers wrote twice as much first-party Rust code this year as in the previous nine years combined. He attributes part of this to agents making it easy to experiment with new languages, and part to Rust's reputation for performance.
The post frames an effective software factory around three pillars: design, construction, and optimization. Rust is designed for good performance by default, so the idiomatic choice is typically also the fastest, while still offering knobs for developers who need to squeeze out extra speed.
The post also serves as a companion to a talk given at REBASE, part of SPLASH, where the author found the conference rewarding, including a session by Steve Klabnik and Dorian Scheidt on using LLMs as collaborators in language design. The central aim is to explore what makes Rust and agentic development work well together and where the language could build on those strengths.
Source: Hacker News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing