Yes. Someone that knows just a little more of rust than you do would know what the borrow checker is.

It's the core feature of rust.

Like talking about java and not knowing what "inheritance" is.

EDIT: just so you understand how vibecoded that project is.

The dude says he vibecoded "some of it" because some rust features make it a hard language for him. The one feature he's talking about is the borrow checker.

It's like saying "man, sure is hot today". Someone says "yeah, this summer sure is hot" and the dude replied "yeah, summerians lived in a hot place too".

Very integral. When someone says they're "struggling with Rust", it's thanks to the borrow checker.

Rust's whole shtick is the way it manages memory, which is the rules enforced by the borrow checker.

Basically:

When you want to store values in variables in any programming language, the memory should be allocated when you need it and freed as soon as you don't anymore.

Traditionally there are two ways this is done:

1. You manage it completely yourself, which is "unsafe" as you can forget to free memory you no longer need. This is called leaking memory. Or "reference" the location of something you freed previously, thereby attempting to read data you may not have permission to read (the OS will usually prevent that and kill the program), or reading and using a value you didn't expect, causing undefined behavior and fun to deal with bugs.

2. The language, sometimes using a process which runs alongside your main program, manages memory. Which adds lots of overhead.

Rust has it's own way of doing this: It adds some rules on how you can pass around references and ownership and these rules are affected by whether you can or can't edit the referenced data. All just so the compiler knows the lifetime of the vars that hold that data and when it can free it (before the program is even compiled, so no overhead when the program is running). Not following the strict rules prevents your program from being compiled into an executable.

The compiler gives very helpful info, tips, and pointers™ though, Rust is also know for this.

Some would call it the single biggest source of gotcha moments learning the language

Yeah, I think the flow was this,

1. Is this vibe coded?
2. Partially, because of some of the features of Rust.
3. Borrow checker?
4. (Humourous misunderstanding ensues.)

Basically asking if the thing that gave them trouble was the borrow checker.

Is rust low level? Genuine question, not trying to start an argument. I guess I sort of view it as low level but with a high level compiler lmao.

The language restriction of not knowing the language.

don't you guys pay your rent and buy food with github stars?

All this LLM shit just gave crackpots a new tool to annoy the hell out of the rest of us.

I hadn't noticed, I laughed out loud so long, thank you

The language restriction is memory safety by default 🙄

My favorite is seeking feedback on reviews on stuff we own and people not responding and being like “I’m sorry I had Claude create 500+ PRs I can’t possibly respond to everything”

You don’t think there’s a problem with that!?!?

Same.

They always say that so proudly too. "It was all the AI bros!"

me staring at the mountain of shit they just plopped in front of me

Yes, I can tell.

Sometimes I lament how long it has been since I wrote a single line of code, because I had to do reviews, testing, management, etc.

I guess some of us like the aspect of coding (as in writing code), while others only like the results (be it the product or the pay)

Insert talking machine, replace skill.

I don't code in rust, so I had no clue what a borrow checker was before seeing this and looking it up on the side.

I also like how they claim it's completely different to KRunner and then, save for OCR and whatever "circle to search" is, these are all features in KRunner.

Sloppers spend so much time talking with their shitbots that they tend to use similar vocabularies and prose. Some of them do have AI write up their responses, too. Some of them even integrate Grok directly into their keyboard.

Nah, I'm pretty sure every LLM out there knows what Rust has a borrow checker.

Maybe they edited README.md by hand.

"The chili isn't entirely feces..."

He who controls all of the memories that have been randomly accessed.

TBH I only occasionally do some C# and C++ for about 20 years in my spare time, but even if I were hypothetically qualified to fix the world i'm kind of just planning to sit back and watch all of the sloppers go bankrupt for ruining their companies.

Even if the pay is good - unfucking vibed code is going to be very grueling. Like fixing legacy code but so much worse - because legacy code at least used to make sense at some point in the past.

Bold of you to assume anyone is going to care enough to hire professionals to fix old software. They're just going to vibe code a new program with the new whizbang-5000 LLM.

Yes, but then you can’t put in your readme that your blazingly fast new app is written in rust.

No he didn't even open the book to learn it. I'm sure borrow checker is in the beginning.

Or just hire someone.

I recommend you and everyone start here: https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/

(there's even an interactive version with quizzes, etc)

(Lack of any idea to program more than anything tbh)

Make a launcher. Apparently they are all the rage nowadays.

If you want an idea: just yesterday libre office writer crashed on me like 7 times. Losing all unsaved progress each time.

If someone competent wrote a good OSS alternative I would download it in a heartbeat.

I'm not sure if your comment means you're rusty (heh) or a novice who hasn't tried programming in a while, so I'm sorry if this comes across as condescending. The best advice I try to give everyone is to chase the fun. That advice applies both to people learning and hobbyists doing stuff.

I see a lot of folks argue about what's the best way to begin or where the best place to begin is. There's no best way. Everything builds into each other. You become a better programmer regardless of what language you choose.

Rust was fun! I fiddled with it a bit a few years ago. The only real frustration I had was that it complained a lot about half correct programs. Like in other languages I may have just been able to put some bad code or something in some place I didn't really care about and wasn't focusing on, but Rust is very strict. It's been long enough now that I forget exactly what specifically bothered me. It could have just as easily been that it was because I didn't know it well so the compiler was just the messenger of that lol. Other languages could have just blown up at runtime.

Rust takes a lot of getting used to if you’re more familiar with C-derived languages but it’s very cool. I’d recommend something small and not needing asynchronous code to begin with (async Rust is… hairy)

On the contrary, the borrow checker is basically the first thing you learn about when writing in Rust as it's the primary "gimmick" of the language. Anyone writing a non-trivial program should have at least heard the term before, even if they don't fully understand how it works.

but I was so new to the game I didn't even know what those words meant

There's nothing wrong with being new to something. But you shouldn't be new to rust and releasing an app. Normally by the time you've written such an app you would be familiar with rust, but vibe coding allows you to bypass that wall

The borrow checker is a feature of Rust's compiler which places strict constraints on ownership of data to guarantee memory safety. It adds a lot of friction to writing Rust code if you're not experienced with the language (or sometimes even if you are). OP refers to the "language restriction of Rust", seemingly talking about the borrow checker, but has never even heard of it. It's kind of like someone claiming they didn't vibecoded their C++ project but having no idea what the STL is.

Answered in another reply.

https://old.reddit.com/r/teenagersbutcode/comments/1unuajm/i_built_protonsearch_a_local_windows_launcher/ovnbcez/?context=3

I wouldn't expect anyone to know about it unless they had taken an interest in Rust. It's pretty unusual.