Steel, Rust, and truth

Steve Klabnik of East River Source Control and co-author of the Rust Programming Language, reflects on his family’s history and the impact of AI on software development. He tells us about the industrial transformations his grandfather and father experienced — agricultural consolidation and the collapse of the steel industry – and the industrial transformation he’s experiencing now, in programming. Steve explores truth and correctness in software, tracing the history of the idea back to Descartes, through type theory and computer science.

The talk examines the anxiety many developers feel about AI potentially replacing human programmers, while acknowledging that the industry has historically automated other sectors. Steve encourages the audience to continue working on program correctness and formal methods, as these become increasingly important when humans are no longer directly writing all the code. Will he, and we, be like his grandfather who retired before industry collapse, his father who had to adapt to unwanted changes, or like Pittsburgh itself, completely reinventing and transforming with the times?