Veteran software developer Steve Klabnik, who helped create Rust and Ruby on Rails, has started work on a new programming language called Rue . The name may seem ambiguous— it evokes both regret and a flower —but the developer himself emphasizes that it was precisely this combination of meanings and its brevity that attracted him.
Klabnik describes Rue as a systems programming language that aims to ensure memory safety without resorting to automatic garbage collection. At the same time, Rue aims to be more intuitive than low-level languages like Rust or Zig. The main idea is to maintain reliability without sacrificing code readability and simplicity.
Klabnik notes that one of the most significant obstacles to widespread adoption of Rust remains its high complexity . This is especially evident among those working on low-level tasks. Instead of aiming for maximum performance, comparable to C and C++, Rust emphasizes ease of development , allowing for moderate performance tradeoffs.
The language is being developed without a memory tracking mechanism , which sets it apart from most new projects of the last two decades. Klabnik believes that the area of safe memory management without traditional garbage collection is still underexplored . Rue is an attempt to fill this gap.
An interesting feature of the project is its creation method. Rue is written primarily in Rust , but also makes extensive use of Anthropic’s Claude AI model . Early reports on the project indicated that Rue would be co-created by Steve Klabnik and Claude . By the second week of development, most of the commits in the repository had been contributed by AI, although architectural decisions remained human-driven .
According to Klabnik, working with language models has become more effective over time thanks to a better understanding of their capabilities. He emphasizes that AI can be useful even for those without extensive programming experience, especially in the early stages of small projects . However, large-scale development requires in-depth engineering knowledge, as AI remains a tool that requires autonomous learning.
In just two weeks, Rue has reached approximately 70,000 lines of code, including refactoring and active compiler development. While full LSP and package manager support is still missing, the basic infrastructure is already in place to enable continued development. This precedent clearly demonstrates how quickly a language core can be assembled with the right amount of artificial intelligence.
Klabnik doesn’t make any predictions about Rue’s future. He emphasizes that his goal is simply to pursue what interests him, without the pressure of expectations . The new language could remain a niche solution or evolve into something more: for now, for him, it’s more of an experiment and a personal challenge than a product with a clear commercial purpose.
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