Rue: Steve Klabnik's AI-Assisted Experiment in Memory Safety Without the Pain
A comprehensive review of Rue, a new systems programming language designed by Steve Klabnik and implemented primarily with Claude AI. Rue explores whether memory safety without garbage collection can be achieved more accessibly than Rust through affine types and mutable value semantics instead of a borrow checker. After a deep dive into Rue's features, type system, borrow-and-inout model, and the AI-assisted development story behind it, we evaluate what the language delivers today, what it's missing, and whether it points toward a real alternative for systems programmers frustrated by Rust's learning curve.
