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jdw64yesterday at 9:22 PM2 repliesview on HN

I think the TypeScript ecosystem is more suitable for this.

I do not think Rust is a bad language. But the agent ecosystem changes very quickly, and in Rust, assembling and reshaping agent workflows is difficult.

Many people prefer Rust, and I understand why. It is a genuinely excellent language, and “Rust is a great language” is a strong message that attracts many developers. But as long as lifetimes exist, I think it will remain difficult.

The lifetime system assumes, in some sense, that humans can fully predict the lifecycle of values and resources. I am not sure that is truly possible in all domains. I am also not sure whether that model is linguistically suitable for the agent ecosystem.

In agent systems, requirements change constantly. Tools change, workflows change, providers change, schemas change, and failure policies change. In that kind of environment, I am not sure Rust is the right fit.

I like Rust a lot, and it is a language I genuinely want to learn. But I am not sure that applying Rust to everything is really the right answer.

I think Rust makes a lot of sense in relatively stable infrastructure ecosystems: operating systems, runtimes, sandboxes, and core low-level layers. But agent code usually requires high-level abstraction and rapid workflow composition. Doing that in Rust takes a tremendous amount of time.


Replies

EdwardDiegoyesterday at 10:33 PM

They also mentioned Go.

beepbooptheoryyesterday at 9:38 PM

Why do agent systems change more than other things? Maybe while were here: What even is an agent system anyway? Does one work on agent systems as the final product, or is the agent system what you work with to make something else?

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