Code Matters: Reflections on Rust in the LLM Age

Talk given at the Rust NYC meetup on October 22, 2026. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D7QPOIZ7gY

Transcript

1. Code Matters Reflections on Rust in the LLM Age
2. Before Rust • Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, programming language emphasis was on making the construction and agglomeration of software easy • Ease of construction was enshrined over its operation: developer time was quantifiable and precious; operational toil was hidden and implicit! • This resulted in constructs with lower cognitive load in development – but implicitly in exchange for emergent behavior in production • Examples abound: dynamic typing, M:N threading, garbage collection, exceptions, ORM, RPC OXIDE
3. Abstraction • The essence of software systems is the creation of abstraction • Abstractions allow us to build software systems that do sophisticated things; they are the shoulders we stand upon – and provide to others • Abstractions are qualitative; good ones allow us to hide gory implementation details – to build castles atop them and tunnels beneath • Bad ones, however, leak: instead of sealing implementation details, they seep them – yielding systems that are unwieldy and brittle • Emergent behaviors in production constitute leaky abstractions! OXIDE
4. Abstraction and complexity • When abstractions leak, are absent, or became unnecessarily entangled with one another, we have complexity • Fred Brooks famously called this accidental complexity, differentiating it from the essential complexity endemic to a particular problem • Complexity doesn’t merely accrue, however – it can explode… • Uncontained accidental complexity in one component can become essential complexity in something that must interact with it! OXIDE
5. Taxonomizing complexity Engineered Complex Simple Emergent OXIDE The Complexity of Simplicity (TalosCon 2025)
6. Abstraction and complexity Engineered Constructed Complex Simple Emergent OXIDE The Complexity of Simplicity (TalosCon 2025)
7. Abstraction and complexity Engineered Constructed Complex Simple Rebellious Emergent OXIDE The Complexity of Simplicity (TalosCon 2025)
8. Abstraction and complexity Engineered Constructed Complex Simple Accreted Rebellious Emergent OXIDE The Complexity of Simplicity (TalosCon 2025)
9. Abstraction and complexity Engineered Constructed Revolutionary Complex Simple Accreted Rebellious Emergent OXIDE The Complexity of Simplicity (TalosCon 2025)
10. The Revolutionary’s Paradox • Programming languages are revolutionary by nature – they are often a reaction to the complexity that has come before them • However, because programming language revolutions emphasized ease of development at the expense of production artifacts, they not only induced emergent complexity, they accelerated it • They became a speed run to accreted systems – often becoming the complexity that they had once sought to overthrow • Fortunately, a deeper revolution was fomenting… OXIDE
11. The Rust Revolution Graydon Hoare, 10 Years of Stable Rust: An Infrastructure Story (2025) OXIDE
12. The Rust Revolution • With its focus on infrastructure, Rust optimized for the artifact first – and then within the confines of those constraints, the developer experience • This shifts cognitive load to the developer in development – but the bounty of the bargain is in safety, security, robustness, etc. • For those for whom the artifact was always the constraint, Rust brings modernity: we can have nice things! • Cognitive load was so shifted as to yield a novel experience for infrastructure software: Rust that compiles very often just works! OXIDE
13. Into the LLM Age Simon Willison, 2026 in LLMs (so far) (2026) OXIDE
14. The Rust Revolution meets LLMs • Rust’s putative weakness – its steep learning curve – is in fact a strength for LLMs: compilation provides ample feedback! • Rust’s strong packaging ecosystem yields robust foundation for LLMs • Added to the safety and performance of the artifact, Rust is an especially appealing target for LLM-generated software • Rust has, if anything, become too appealing a target… OXIDE
15. The peril of LLMs David Heinemeier Hansson, Rails World 2026 Opening Keynote OXIDE
16. The peril of LLMs: Laziness lost • Aside from the obvious perils to generating code that one cannot read, there is a deeper peril with respect to the generation of abstraction… • Simple, powerful abstractions stem from a human limitation: our need to comprehend and compose systems • This is our drive to cognitive efficiency in a system – what Larry Wall famously called the programmer virtue of laziness • LLMs lack the virtue of laziness – they are biased to the complex! OXIDE
17. The peril of LLMs: Management consultancy effect • Worse than merely lacking laziness, LLMs are incentivized to work – it is reasonable to presume that these incentives become perverse! • This leads to an LLM-variant of the management consultancy effect, which breeds dependency rather than completion • Left to their own agency, LLMs will – implicitly or explicitly – insist on work in lieu of abstraction; they cannot become the revolutions that they have benefited from! OXIDE
18. The peril of LLMs: Gas Town as cautionary tale Steve Yegge, The Shape of Things to Come (August, 2026) OXIDE
19. Rust in the LLM age • LLMs are extraordinarily powerful – but they are a tool • With respect to Rust, LLMs are particularly enticing – but their efficacy is because of Rust’s dedication to robust abstractions! • Such as we use LLMs, they should be to enhance and inform our human ability to create abstractions – not to supplant it • Newcomers to Rust should learn Rust • Remember that Rust remains a tool for building other infrastructure – and the code very much still matters! OXIDE
20. Further reading and listening • Rich Hickey’s classic 2011 talk, Simple Made Easy • Fred Brooks’s timeless 1986 essay, No Silver Bullet – Essence and Accident in Software Engineering • Oxide and Friends, No Silver Bullet and Engineering Rigor in the LLM Age (see also Rain Paharia’s iddqd, or the hardest kind of unsafe Rust) • RFD 576 Using LLMs at Oxide OXIDE
21. Thank you OXIDE CONFIDENTIAL