Show HN: I rebuilt the only parts of my IDE I use, in Rust, over a weekend

29 pointsposted 5 hours ago
by kyle-ssg
(github.com)

33 Comments

spiralcoaster

37 minutes ago

Actual title: I had Claude code up a diff tool in Rust over the weekend

My guess is this made it to the front page solely from the Rust boost.

iLoveOncall

21 minutes ago

That's just too funny, even the README is entirely vibe-coded and the label under the image doesn't describe AT ALL the content of the image:

> ~120fps scrolling a 37k-line package-lock.json — viewport virtualization + off-thread highlighting.

When it's a static PNG of an extremely small diff.

I'm flagging the post as spam, that's what it is.

kyle-ssg

a minute ago

Hey, actually there's a script that generates the screenshots so that I don't have to adjust them every time the UI changes. I do get 120fps with a 37k line package-lock, try it yourself if you don't believe me.

asadm

33 minutes ago

> I had Claude code up

What's the difference?

bdcravens

19 minutes ago

To some, it's less authentic. In my mind, it's like "building" a house, when the truth it, you orchestrated contractors who did the actual work. A different set of skills, not necessarily less impressive, but probably is depending on the audience. (In my example, you wouldn't want to shoulder way into a group of tradesmen and talk about your building prowess)

applfanboysbgon

24 minutes ago

The difference is that the resulting software is useless, buggy, unpolished, will only be used by the person who prompted it and only for about three days before they get tired of it, and that nothing was learned.

mathieudombrock

19 minutes ago

That's what I'm not getting about these kinds of posts. What is the point of sharing this? It's just a bunch of nothing.

kyle-ssg

19 minutes ago

Hey, actually my goal is to stop using my IDE, it'll be one less subscription for me. So I won't get tired of this, I plan on using it daily. I've spent quite a few years obsessing over software quality so I won't accept unpolished and buggy!

applfanboysbgon

9 minutes ago

Everyone who vibe codes something over the weekend thinks that their vibe coded software will be the greatest thing since sliced bread. Then they realise that as they continue prompting, it takes disproportionately large amounts of effort to see any progress as program complexity rises and the token predictor begins tripping over itself more and more. At least use it daily for a month rather than saying you plan to use it, then try showing it. If you could actually get through a month of using and prompting on the project without getting tired of it, that would already put you ahead of 99.9999% of vibe-coded projects. As it is, literally anyone could prompt for this over a weekend, so what value does showing this have?

achandlerwhite

20 minutes ago

Forced dark theme -- please don't punish me for having astigmatism--can't do dark mode

danielrmay

21 minutes ago

What might you build when you let Claude take care of commits? :-)

Maledictus

17 minutes ago

great idea! this use case is the only reason left why I start VS codium.

satvikpendem

35 minutes ago

This is basically what the agentic apps do already right? Like Codex, Claude Desktop, Copilot etc. Except with those I can also write commands to the AI as well as review their output all in one app rather than multiple.

kyle-ssg

23 minutes ago

Hey, by this do you mean viewing a diff of before and after? If so I get what you mean, but given how important the review is pre-PR I do always come back to IDE.

mathieudombrock

22 minutes ago

Why would you choose to have the ai use a language you don't understand? Isn't this basically admitting you had nothing to do with this project and anyone else could pay an ai to make the same thing easily?

Is this something you expect other people to use?

Are you planning to maintain this?

Are you making a point about ai capabilities?

Is this just a joke?

I guess I don't really understand the point of posts like this.

asadm

43 minutes ago

This is amazing and I will use this! Does it support git submodules? I like how VSCode divides changes into buckets across all git repos in current workspace, I can commit each separately from one sidebar.

kyle-ssg

29 minutes ago

Hey! That's actually something I haven't checked, none of my active projects use them. I expect it won't break but I haven't designed the diff to account for that. I will take a look though it's a great point.

asadm

25 minutes ago

Great. Otherwise I will find time to send a PR sometime.

tiesp

3 hours ago

UI looks great

kyle-ssg

3 hours ago

Oh thanks that's made my day haha!

smt88

2 hours ago

The primary value of IDEs in the agentic era are: debugging, code review (with good diffing), and management of the agent’s context. I also use mine for browsing databases, but not everyone does that.

You seem to have one of those three. I’m not sure what your coding background is, but debuggers/profilers are incredibly useful and important, and it’s essentially malpractice for a developer never to use them.

M4R5H4LL

an hour ago

Such a cringy and unpleasant statement... OP is smart to adjust to change. I have hand-written software for the past 30 years, and the moment I stop using my IDE, you’d tell me don’t know what I am doing?? Dude, I probably was writing assembly code by hand when there were no IDEs and you were still trying to figure out the taste of Play-Doh. Some people really need to put their head in the right place.

smt88

3 minutes ago

[delayed]

xtracto

32 minutes ago

>but debuggers/profilers are incredibly useful and important, and it’s essentially malpractice for a developer never to use them.

Just wait for the moment you need to write code for an embedded platform that doesn't have a debugging mechanism.

I've been programming for more than 30 years. Funnily, I used to use debuggers A LOT (in Borland Turbo C++ DOS "IDE" times, Visual Basic, Eclipse, Netbeans, Adobe Flash Builder, etc). But nowadays I seldomly use the debugger, if at all.

smt88

a few seconds ago

[delayed]

kyle-ssg

an hour ago

Hey! I'm a web and mobile developer for past 12 years and have wrote quite a lot of code over the years (github for receipts). I actually even written a mobile application profiler, it's on GitHub.

Debugging and profiling has always been outside of the IDE for me, except when I started out as a Java Developer.

johnfn

an hour ago

It is a little crazy to accuse people not using the dev tools you like of malpractice.

smt88

5 minutes ago

"Debugger" is not just a "dev tool I like." It's the only way to see what a program is doing while it's doing it, unless you're just writing to your console and hoping you captured enough state with your write statements.

I understand there are people who haven't used debuggers before and don't know what they're missing out on, but there's no excuse for that anymore because it's become much easier to set them up and use them.

user

39 minutes ago

[deleted]

mhitza

an hour ago

Woah woah, temper down the assertion my friend!

Profiling is a tool meant for processes that relate to performance, or hot spots. Debuggers when integrated well[1], are great tools but compete with print based debugging which is a much more general skill one uses and needs to learn.

Let's reserve malpraxis considerations for writing code without any true thought given for security, privacy, accessibility and human rights affected.

[1] and I don't like the interface of any of the debuggers I used. Except maybe in ghci, if I had the patience to script a Tcl/Tk frontend one day.

asadm

24 minutes ago

what kind of noob uses debugger from within their IDE?

mrits

33 minutes ago

I got out of the habit of leaning on debuggers with first making sure I'm not lacking in logging. I can't remember the last time I actually needed to set a break point.