What are the legal consequences? Would this rewrite patent/IP laws? I always wondered why software can be patented at all. Since math cannot be patented, then software cannot be patented by extension of the Curry-Howard correspondence. Now REA is making this a reality. The only safe program delivery would then require hardware-enforced compute boundary inside a lower ring of the CPU not accessible by anything that is booted after CPU production or fully-homomorphic encryption.
The real difficulty of systems programming in C is due to syscall/POSIX/libc semantics like the interplay between signal handling and async readv/writev resumption. These things are way beyond what the borrow checker and coverage-guided fuzzers can deal with and consist the bulk of vulnerabilities. Rust won't save you from CopyFail; you would need hardcore formal verification like TLA+ coupled with F* /Low* /Pulse to catch it before release. AI (or manual) Rust rewrites of well trodden C code is calling for trouble more than anything else.
Too true. I realized that the only way to do an actual review is to have wrote it yourself in the first place. The relatively slow speed of writing code reflects the amount of subtleties and effort to think through all of them. Only when LLMs are used as hint givers, are they actually doing an essential speedup. This goes to show how shallow programming and code review had always been. The right impression is that of studying real analysis.
Too true. This is why Rudin's little book, Principles of Mathematical Analysis, normally takes a whole year to cover: one has to work through the proof line by line in order gain enough understanding to do the exercises. Programming gives you the false sense of ease with leaky "interfaces" and quantum-entangled "decoupling". LOL, one microservice in one separate git repo, and tested with mocks and Gherkin syntax BDD. Just LOL, I call this hyperreal programming. With "spec-driven" AI generated code that is reviewed and tested by AI, it is certain that "the programming did not take place". In this "brave new world", "the map has overcome the territory", and "the twelfth camel" was never returned. Programmers certainly don't need "the mythical man-ager" to go delulu and full ouroboros, i.e. "there is no big Other".
