Readit Newsoverbring_labs commented on I let LLMs write an Elixir NIF in C; it mostly worked overbring.com/blog/2025-0... · Posted by u/overbring_labs
Why C instead of Rust or Zig? Rustler and Zigler exist.
I feel like a Vibecoded NIF in C is the absolute last thing I would want to expose the BEAM to.
Well, it's in Rust now, thanks to your and someone else's comments! https://github.com/waseigo/disk_space
overbring_labs commented on I let LLMs write an Elixir NIF in C; it mostly worked overbring.com/blog/2025-0... · Posted by u/overbring_labs
Great outcome :)
Truly, way better than before: https://github.com/waseigo/disk_space
And it now runs on everything, across more Elixir and Erlang/OTP versions than before!
overbring_labs commented on I let LLMs write an Elixir NIF in C; it mostly worked overbring.com/blog/2025-0... · Posted by u/overbring_labs
I'd also recommend having a look at the Zig library for Elixir. For simple stuff, you can just inline, but support for pretty complex setups too.
Also comes with a built-in BEAM allocator so the runtime properly reports NIF memory consumption.
Thanks, one day I'll look into Zig too, because I've been impressed with what Tigerbeetle has achieved with it! For now, I'm all-in on Elixir.
overbring_labs commented on I let LLMs write an Elixir NIF in C; it mostly worked overbring.com/blog/2025-0... · Posted by u/overbring_labs
It's interesting why the author used weaker models (like Grok 3 when 4 is available, and Gemini 2.5 Flash when Pro is), since the difference in coding quality between these models is significant, and results could be much better.
Holy moly, you weren't kidding. Grok 4 is so much better. Thanks!
overbring_labs commented on I let LLMs write an Elixir NIF in C; it mostly worked overbring.com/blog/2025-0... · Posted by u/overbring_labs
Why C instead of Rust or Zig? Rustler and Zigler exist.
I feel like a Vibecoded NIF in C is the absolute last thing I would want to expose the BEAM to.
Given the amount of issues the code had when I ran splint on the C file, I agree. The question was for me whether I can get something working to get over the "speed bump" of lacking such a function for the API client I'm writing.
I'm now re-vibe-coding it into Rust with the same process, but also using Grok 4 to get better results. It now builds and passes the tests on Elixir 1.14 to 1.18 on macOS and Ubuntu, but I'm still trying to get Grok 3 and 4 to fix the Windows-specific parts of the Rust code.
overbring_labs commented on I let LLMs write an Elixir NIF in C; it mostly worked overbring.com/blog/2025-0... · Posted by u/overbring_labs
Ok. But what are you even reacting to? Who is saying that it produced a working product?
As you said, the very title of the article acknowledged that it didn’t produce a working product.
This is just outrage for the sake of outrage.
Amen, thank you for noticing. The goal here was not to produce something of stellar quality, which is anyway out of the question as I don't have the skills/knowledge to evaluate anything other than "it returns the Elixir map I wanted". It was to see if this is feasible at all.
overbring_labs commented on I let LLMs write an Elixir NIF in C; it mostly worked overbring.com/blog/2025-0... · Posted by u/overbring_labs
It's interesting why the author used weaker models (like Grok 3 when 4 is available, and Gemini 2.5 Flash when Pro is), since the difference in coding quality between these models is significant, and results could be much better.
It's just that Grok 3 is faster than 4, so I've set it by default. But point taken, I'll try out the newer ones now that I'm converting it to Rust.