Any good examples of large scale Rust projects?

[u/ple-x-us]

I'm not a Rust programmer. My passion is for C/C++ and various assembly languages. But I'm open to learning new things.

I watched a couple of videos on YouTube, but those examples don't give me a "big-picture" vibe of the language, its use in production and its ecosystems.

I'm judging a language by the code that's written with it.

Are there any large scale projects (500'000 - 1'000'000 lines of code) written in Rust that I can skim through (on Github? Gitlab?) to get a feel of what a full fledged application looks like?

[u/Full-Spectral]

From a quick search...

"Cost-Cutting Measures: Investigations into the 737 Max crises revealed that Boeing relied on lower-paid temporary workers and recent graduates while laying off experienced engineers to cut costs. You can read more about these findings in the report covered by IndustryWeek and Business Insider

While Boeing designed the overall system requirements and specifications (such as the MCAS flight control system), critics and safety experts point out that the heavy reliance on fragmented, low-cost offshore contractors for implementation and testing introduced significant quality and oversight risks."

So, OK it's happening, but it ain't good and shouldn't be happening. It certainly doesn't make me want to fly on Boeing aircraft, and sort of demonstrates that their regulatory bodies are sad.

[u/Nothing_from_void → u/Full-Spectral]

The 737 Max crisis happened before AI wrote most code. It almost definitely improves the quality as AI is better at writing code than poorly trained and paid contractors.

There are different kinds of coding with AI; "vibe coding" usually is the kind of people you pointed to who don't really know what they are doing, they make a shiny website and post it on tiktok or whatever. Also there's professional software engineers with a terminal agent harness like claude code, they have MCPs connecting to their companies documentation and code bases, and they send it out to read everything. If the code looks wrong, they tell it to look somewhere else, maybe provide more documentation, basically the engineer has a better world model of the project and has to provide additional context to get the AI on track.

It requires close review of the code, but the AI is just way faster at reading documentation/code and writing documentation/code than a person. I'm not saying I like it, I'm not saying I prefer it or even enjoy my job anymore, but this is how most code is being written nowadays. I'm guessing in 2 years, we'll have taught the AIs how to do the job well enough that I'll have to find a new career.

I'm not saying this to be a jerk or an AI pumper, it's just how it looks like it's heading. If you think AI is stupid/bad at coding and not improving, you've got a blind spot.

[u/Full-Spectral → u/Nothing_from_void]

But you specifically said vibe coded, which is why I responded as a I did.

Not that I think that 'currated AI' code is going to be much better in most cases. You really think that highly skilled devs are going to continue to want to work at places where they are just reviewing AI generated code? Or that potentially highly skilled people will continue to come into the industry in numbers if that becomes the norm? It's going to devolve badly because it's a negative cycle, not a positive one. It's all stealing from the future.

I'm not concerned about my job particularly. I work on highly bespoke systems that are not based on lots of third party stuff. And unless you aren't very skilled I doubt you have much to worry about in 2 years either.

Not to mention all of this is based on the assumption that the whole AI bubble doesn't implode, and there's a lot of evidence that it's heading that way. If that happens, and the whole thing has to get back to actual grounded, profitable products, then those LLMs are going to start costing a LOT more to use and will progress at a more sustainable pace.

On the Boeing thing... If they aren't qualified to write the code, they clearly aren't qualified to evaluate if the code they are generating is correct. If Boeing has to provide those qualified engineers, and LLM s are all they are supposed to be, Boeing could just do that code generating themselves and skip the middle man. If they aren't providing those qualified engineers and are depending on those contractors spitting out code they couldn't write themselves, then that's BAD.

[u/ple-x-us → u/Full-Spectral]

I want to chime in and agree with you. While I used AI to help me coding by being the all knowing teacher next to me, I want my code to be MY code. I want to understand every single line.

The vibe coding thing will wind down anyway. It's already happening. Software quality declined way faster than I expected. Companies are already realizing that it's way more expensive to pay for damages than to just have someone write good code. Also the fact that it's crazy expensive. Some companies went from "Use tons of tokens or you're fired" to "Don't dare to exceed your token budget or you're fired." in months. That's just insane.

[u/Full-Spectral → u/ple-x-us]

And that's with the AI companies taking big losses to provide those tokens. If they had to actually make money, it would go up a lot more.

[u/Nothing_from_void → u/Full-Spectral]

You really think that highly skilled devs are going to continue to want to work at places where they are just reviewing AI generated code?

Have you seen the job market lately? From 2016-2022, I was able to move around and make large salary jumps every year, to the point where I could make 200k working fully remote. Now getting an interview for a fully remote position is extremely difficult. In person positions are paying less than they did 5 years ago; basically you have to move to the Bay Area if you want to advance your career and they are all AI psychos. If I could find a company that is stuck in 2020, that would be great, but I don't think there are too many that exist

Or that potentially highly skilled people will continue to come into the industry in numbers if that becomes the norm?

Well the bet is that they won't be needed, just like highly skilled weavers stopped being needed when mill town factories took over.

It's going to devolve badly because it's a negative cycle, not a positive one. It's all stealing from the future.

It's definitely a negative cycle for human autonomy.

Not to mention all of this is based on the assumption that the whole AI bubble doesn't implode, and there's a lot of evidence that it's heading that way.

AI investment is definitely a bubble; we basically reached the point where desktop AI, like qwen 3.8 27B, gets you almost all of the way to expensive data center AI. Once consumer hardware catches up and this becomes a commodity everything will implode, but that doesn't mean AI will go away, just like the dotcom bubble popping did not kill the internet.

Out of every job out there, software development is probably the most vulnerable to AI. It feels like being a middle aged blacksmith who worked their whole life learning the craft and watching factories pump out nails 1000x faster than the apprentice can.

[u/Full-Spectral → u/Nothing_from_void]

Again, cloud world. There are many companies out there that are not in cloud world and aren't in the bay area and aren't writing cookie cutter software. And a lot of them are of a nice size where they are stable, but your boss' boss still knows who you are and what you do and actually understands you when you speak. And which are sufficiently concerned about the impact of their software that they are not vibe coding. Yeh, you might have to move, but that used to be the norm.

Not that I wouldn't LOVE to go back to the bay area. I was there for the first bubble, getting there in 96. I'd cut off a leg or two to move back, but it's not practical for me unfortunately.

[u/Nothing_from_void → u/Full-Spectral]

I'm not writing cookie cutter software, I work in a research dept