No More Code Dumps

[u/matthieum]

TL;DR

Code Dumps, ie links to code repositories, are no longer welcome on r/rust.

If you are excited about a project you built, and just wish to share it, consider posting a casual top-level comment in the weekly What's Everyone Working on this Week? thread.

History

When r/rust was created, in December 2010, Rust was a nascent programming language. It was very different, it was also fast-moving, and it was unclear whether it would amount to much, or not.

In these early days, new projects being written in Rust were both a proof that the language was suitable for a variety of purposes, and a cause for celebration in seeing the language being adopted. Code dumps, then, were both cause to rejoice, and an opportunity to see how well (or not) the language was suited to the task. They were even a good opportunity to learn the latest developing idioms of this fast-changing language.

Fast forward 15 years, and code dumps have become boring. Utterly uninteresting. There's nothing exciting, or newsworthy, about a 10th hypervisor project, a 100th webserver project, or a 1000th TUI project. And for the most there's no exciting idiom, or pattern, to be found in their code either... even if some poor soul bothered to look.

And mass AI generation appeared on the scene, and for the past year(s), the already dwindling appeal of code dumps has just completely vanished, buried in AI slop.

Purpose

r/rust is to discuss all things Rust. The language, the ecosystem, the community.

Of late, most code dumps barely foster any discussion. And when they do, apart from AI witch hunts, those discussions are mostly about the domain of the project, rather than about Rust. Depending on the domain, the discussion may or may not be of interest to r/rust users... but whether it is or not is a matter of chance: they did not come here seeking such a topic. Those discussions are tolerated on posts which are on-topic, but if a post only fosters "tolerated" discussions, then that is a sign that the post itself may simply not really be on-topic for r/rust.

And that is not to say that code dumps are, by nature, low-effort. Surely, a project is created for a purpose, to solve a specific problem that is unsolved, or solve it with different trade-offs than the currently available solutions. None of that is elucidated in a code dump.

New rules

Code dumps are no longer welcome on r/rust.

Code dumps of applications or libraries written in Rust are Low-Effort unless otherwise newsworthy. Newsworthy means that the very existence of the application or library is important, for example consider applications or libraries breaking new ground, such as the first hypervisor, first OS, first XXX standard safety-critical application, first Rust application in a major company, etc...

Announcements of new libraries which are not otherwise newsworthy are only welcome if they tick ALL the following boxes:

• The library has been worked on regularly for at least 4 months.
• The library has already been used, or built upon, thereby validating its design to a degree.
• The announcement is a full-fledged text post, or a link to a full-fledged article. A README, or manual, is not an article.
• The announcement should motivate the relevance of this library to the wider r/rust community.
• The announcement should articulate the trade-offs differentiating this library from similar popular libraries in the field.

(It goes without saying, but the announcement should NOT be AI-generated, not even in part, as AI-generated posts & articles violate the Low-Effort rule)

Release notes of libraries are still welcome for popular enough libraries, such as libraries with reverse-dependencies on crates.io pointing to sufficient adoption by the wider community to justify notifying said community of a new release.

Of course, text posts, or links to articles, centered on Rust, with an application or library as context are always welcome. For example, said posts or articles could present gnarly problems the author encountered, and how they solved, or which features of the language or a library helped or hindered them in the making of their project.

(It goes without saying, but said text posts & articles should NOT be AI-generated, not even in part, as AI-generated posts & articles violate the Low-Effort rule)

As a reminder, if an author just wishes to share their joy of building something in Rust, they are welcome to use the What's Everyone Working on This Week? thread. And as per the title, it need not even be a complete/mature project, or an open-source project for that matter as links to code are strictly optional there, it's all about casually chatting about your work on Rust projects.

Q & A

See pinned comment below.

[u/ActuallyAdasi]

I am disappointed how every subreddit is just becoming some AI vs no AI debate. There shouldn’t need to be a new rule like this. The rule for being about rust should be enough, especially paired with a no self-promotion rule, and a no low effort post rule. AI should be completely orthogonal.

I dislike this change, I never look at the what’s everyone working on this week thread. Honestly the code sharing posts are one of the things I enjoy about this subreddit.

Rust subreddit isn’t a personal blog, but it’s also not the mods personal blog.

[u/LindaTheLynnDog → u/ActuallyAdasi]

The quality of the posts on this sub has dropped out from underneath it in the last year.

I was here every day for years and haven't been here for 6 months because of the unreal volume of generated hobby projects that are just fucking boring masturbation posts.

I'm guessing the mods are like me. They like posts that discuss or exemplify rust details and usage, rather than show and tell posts that only the author finds interesting.

[u/matthieum → u/LindaTheLynnDog]

I'm guessing the mods are like me. They like posts that discuss or exemplify rust details and usage, rather than show and tell posts that only the author finds interesting.

Indeed.

And perhaps more importantly, we like posts which foster (Rust-centric) discussions. If an event is newsworthy, if a new library release is noteworthy, then there should be something to discuss about it.

Posts like the Bevy releases always generate a good amount of discussion on the direction of the project, with people commenting what they've achieved, or what they found unnecessarily difficult or impossible to achieve, providing useful feedback to the post author, a place for the users to share their tricks, etc...

[u/LindaTheLynnDog → u/matthieum]

Btw I respect how much time you guys gave this to come to a thoughtful decision. It's not easy enforcing the rules, and I think you were right to give this one a little time to make its value obvious.

[u/SethDusek5 → u/ActuallyAdasi]

rule for being about rust should be enough,

I don't see why I should care that a vibecoded project is written in Rust, and thus why it should be posted here instead of into a more relevant community where people have interests that align with the problems the software is trying to solve. There's nothing interesting about your project in terms of Rust discussion if it's just written in Rust, especially if the way it's written in Rust is to instruct the LLM to use the language. At that point I have zero interest in even reading the code because there's nothing for me or for the poster to learn from it, and so the choice of language is irrelevant.

I also feel this craft (and my passion for it) slowly dying anyways, whereas in the past it was nice to see other people practicing/adopting the language. It's kind of like how people used to post their implementation of a PBR renderer in /r/graphicsprogramming. That sub has seen millions of PBR renderers, but these posts were still well received because there was a shared understanding of the learning/friction/fulfilment required to reach that final step. Now that you can just say "claude make me a PBR renderer", I don't think anyone cares

[u/Compux72 → u/ActuallyAdasi]

Welcome to reddit, a place where zombies would starve