Steve Klabnik
Programmer and writer; co-wrote The Rust Programming Language and worked on Rust's documentation for years.
Steve Klabnik did not write this page. ppll compiled it from their own words, each linked to the source. Is this you? · Report a mistake
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What they believe
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Function signatures that support many flexible calling styles make it hard to know everything a function can do.
they can be really concise, and beautiful to a certain kind of eye, but it also makes it really, really hard to know what all you can do with a function.
steveklabnik.comSaid 21 Sept 2026This on korrents
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AI is dramatically changing how people work and is here to stay.
AI is here to stay, and it is dramatically changing how people work.
steveklabnik.comSaid 2 Sept 2026This on korrents
The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These 2: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.
Feed
As its own page →Hiding
4 November
21 September
From one piece Arguing about arguments 2 beliefs · steveklabnik.com
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korrents.com
Named function arguments' readability advantage for humans is even stronger for AI coding agents reading code.Their words
And the readability advantage for humans is even stronger for agents: the extra clarity of the text inline seems to (I haven't run real evals on this yet...) be more helpful and use less tokens and calls when looking at the actual call site.
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korrents.com
Function signatures that support many flexible calling styles make it hard to know everything a function can do.Their words
they can be really concise, and beautiful to a certain kind of eye, but it also makes it really, really hard to know what all you can do with a function.
2 September
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Their words
AI is here to stay, and it is dramatically changing how people work.
14 July
From one piece Too many words about DIDs 2 beliefs · steveklabnik.com
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korrents.com
Giving people the choice to manage their own cryptographic keys matters more than forcing everyone to do so.Their words
A criticism of this boils down to "well, most users won't do that," and while that's true, I also think that's okay for most people, and that having the choice is more important than forcing every user to deal with their own key management.
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korrents.com
A person who controls their own infrastructure and signing keys can meaningfully own their digital identity.Their words
I think that this possibility is an important design property, and allows motivated users to meaningfully own their identity.
10 July
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Their words
it is unfortunate if these policies end up making it so that individuals like me can't make my software as robust as products from large organizations.
22 April
23 February
27 January
From one piece The most important thing when working with LLMs 3 beliefs · steveklabnik.com
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korrents.com
Practices that make an LLM's work easier to evaluate also tend to benefit the human developers working alongside it.Their words
what's good for Claude is also probably good for humans working on your system.
The most important thing when working with LLMssteveklabnik.com
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korrents.com
Computers execute exactly what you tell them, not necessarily what you meant to tell them.Their words
the computer will do exactly what you say, but not what you mean.
The most important thing when working with LLMssteveklabnik.com
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Their words
The most important thing that you can do when working with an LLM is give it a way to quickly evaluate if it's doing the right thing, and if it isn't, point it in the right direction.
22 January
From one piece Agentic development basics 3 beliefs · steveklabnik.com
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Their words
"AI does better on greenfield projects" is not exactly true, but there's enough truth to it that I think you should do a new project.
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Their words
In the previous post, I said that you shouldn't be mean to Claude. I think it makes the LLM perform worse.
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Their words
Claude is going to try and figure out what you mean and do that. This is both the source of these tools' power and also the very thing that makes it hard to trust them.
15 January
From one piece How to think about Gas Town 2 beliefs · steveklabnik.com
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korrents.com
AI has changed software development enough that some old assumptions about it no longer hold.Their words
I have a sneaking suspicion that the world has changed, and some old assumptions do not hold any longer.
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Their words
And while rigor is a great value to have, when you're in an experimental mindset, relaxing rigor can be a valid strategy to move forward.
7 January
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korrents.com
Swearing at or being rude to an AI assistant makes it perform worse than treating it respectfully.Their words
I un-ironically believe that swearing at Claude makes it perform worse.
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Usesrcmnd.app
ClaudeTheir words
I’m going to be speaking about Claude directly, because it’s the tool I use the most, but a lot of this should apply to other platforms as well.
21 December 2025
2 December 2025
18 November 2025
22 October 2025
10 June 2025
9 June 2025
30 May 2025
28 May 2025
15 May 2025
21 April 2025
7 February 2025
Nothing matches.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 16 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
Function signatures that support many flexible calling styles make it hard to know everything a function can do.
they can be really concise, and beautiful to a certain kind of eye, but it also makes it really, really hard to know what all you can do with a function.
Arguing about arguments Said 21 Sept 2026
Named function arguments' readability advantage for humans is even stronger for AI coding agents reading code.
And the readability advantage for humans is even stronger for agents: the extra clarity of the text inline seems to (I haven't run real evals on this yet...) be more helpful and use less tokens and calls when looking at the actual call site.
Arguing about arguments Said 21 Sept 2026
AI is dramatically changing how people work and is here to stay.
AI is here to stay, and it is dramatically changing how people work.
So, what happened to my Claude Code series? Said 2 Sept 2026
Show 13 more
A person who controls their own infrastructure and signing keys can meaningfully own their digital identity.
I think that this possibility is an important design property, and allows motivated users to meaningfully own their identity.
Too many words about DIDs Said 14 Jul 2026
Giving people the choice to manage their own cryptographic keys matters more than forcing everyone to do so.
A criticism of this boils down to "well, most users won't do that," and while that's true, I also think that's okay for most people, and that having the choice is more important than forcing every user to deal with their own key management.
Too many words about DIDs Said 14 Jul 2026
AI safety restrictions on cybersecurity-adjacent requests make it harder for individual developers to build software as robust as large organizations' products.
it is unfortunate if these policies end up making it so that individuals like me can't make my software as robust as products from large organizations.
Compilers and AI 'cyber' defense Said 10 Jul 2026
The key to working effectively with an LLM is giving it a fast, objective way to evaluate its own progress and redirect itself when it's off track.
The most important thing that you can do when working with an LLM is give it a way to quickly evaluate if it's doing the right thing, and if it isn't, point it in the right direction.
The most important thing when working with LLMs Said 27 Jan 2026
Computers execute exactly what you tell them, not necessarily what you meant to tell them.
the computer will do exactly what you say, but not what you mean.
The most important thing when working with LLMs Said 27 Jan 2026
Practices that make an LLM's work easier to evaluate also tend to benefit the human developers working alongside it.
what's good for Claude is also probably good for humans working on your system.
The most important thing when working with LLMs Said 27 Jan 2026
An AI coding assistant's tendency to infer what a user means rather than exactly what they typed is both its greatest strength and the reason it is hard to trust.
Claude is going to try and figure out what you mean and do that. This is both the source of these tools' power and also the very thing that makes it hard to trust them.
Agentic development basics Said 22 Jan 2026
Being rude to a language model makes it perform worse.
In the previous post, I said that you shouldn't be mean to Claude. I think it makes the LLM perform worse.
Agentic development basics Said 22 Jan 2026
AI coding tools perform better on greenfield projects than on existing codebases, though the advantage is smaller than commonly assumed.
"AI does better on greenfield projects" is not exactly true, but there's enough truth to it that I think you should do a new project.
Agentic development basics Said 22 Jan 2026
Relaxing rigor is a valid strategy when working in an experimental mindset.
And while rigor is a great value to have, when you're in an experimental mindset, relaxing rigor can be a valid strategy to move forward.
How to think about Gas Town Said 15 Jan 2026
AI has changed software development enough that some old assumptions about it no longer hold.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the world has changed, and some old assumptions do not hold any longer.
How to think about Gas Town Said 15 Jan 2026
Swearing at or being rude to an AI assistant makes it perform worse than treating it respectfully.
I un-ironically believe that swearing at Claude makes it perform worse.
Getting started with Claude for software development Said 7 Jan 2026
Becoming productive with large language models is not easy, despite what many advocates claim.
Becoming productive with LLMs is not actually easy, no matter what other people tell you.
Getting started with Claude for software development Said 7 Jan 2026
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
Recommends rcmnd
rcmnd What they recommend 2 things — each backed by an exact quote.
Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.
Recent
Uses Claude
I’m going to be speaking about Claude directly, because it’s the tool I use the most, but a lot of this should apply to other platforms as well.
steveklabnik.com 7 Jan 2026
Recommends REWORK
I’d recommend this book to anyone who’s working in the business world or doing a startup, even if they hate that term.
steveklabnik.com 10 Mar 2010
Where they publish
Blog steveklabnik.com His blog on Rust, systems and the craft of writing documentation. Has a feed.
Recent
- Arguing about arguments 21 Sept 2026 Here’s some Rust code: // define a function fn foo (x : i32 , y : i32 ) -> i32 { // body elided } // call it let z = foo ( 5 , 6 ); In programming language jargon, we call x and y parameters and 5 and 6 arguments . Rust…
- So, what happened to my Claude Code series? 2 Sept 2026 I started off this year writing a lot, and wanted to keep up the pace. I did good at first! And then… I didn’t manage to. In some ways, this is because I have just been super busy! I’ve never had less free time, and I’m…
- Too many words about DIDs 14 Jul 2026 Your “Bluesky account” is not just a Bluesky account: it is an account that can be used with a variety of other applications. This post is going to be an exploration of part of what that means from a technical perspecti…
Show 17 more
- Compilers and AI 'cyber' defense 10 Jul 2026 I haven’t had time to blog in a while, I have a lot to say, but have been doing a lot of things and so haven’t gotten words down in a while. One of those things in the past few weeks has been picking back up my Rue proj…
- The most important thing when working with LLMs 27 Jan 2026 Okay, so you’ve got the basics of working with Claude going. But you’ve probably run into some problems: Claude doesn’t do what you want it to do, it gets confused about what’s happening and goes off the rails, all sort…
- Agentic development basics 22 Jan 2026 In my last post, I suggested that you should start using Claude in your software development process via read-only means at first. The idea is just to get used to interacting with the AI, seeing what it can do, and seei…
- How to think about Gas Town 15 Jan 2026 I want to continue with my series on how you can use Claude Code for software development , but I have at least two posts I need to write first. This post is one of those two. Thanks for all of the kind words you all ha…
- Getting started with Claude for software development 7 Jan 2026 2025 was an interesting year in many ways. One way in which it was interesting for me is that I went from an AI hater to a pretty big user. And so I’ve had a few requests for a “using Claude” guide, so I figure new year…
- Thirteen years of Rust and the birth of Rue 21 Dec 2025 I started using Rust on December 21, 2012. It’s now December 22, 2025. That’s a long time. I don’t have a ton of thoughts about Rust to share today, like I thought I might. I program in the language regularly, it’s nice…
- I see a future in jj 22 Oct 2025 In December of 2012, I was home for Christmas, reading Hacker News. And that’s when I saw “ Rust 0.5 released ."" I’m a big fan of programming languages, so I decided to check it out. At the time, I was working on Ruby…
- A tale of two Claudes 10 Jun 2025 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of…
- Is Rust faster than C? 9 Jun 2025 Someone on Reddit recently asked: What would make a Rust implementation of something faster than a C implementation, all things being the same? I think this is a great and interesting question! It’s really tough because…
- I am disappointed in the AI discourse 28 May 2025 Recently, something happened that made me kind of like, break a little bit. I’m still not entirely sure why this whole thing bothers me so much, but here’s a blog post about it. I happened to ask ChatGPT something for f…
- Rust 1.0, ten years later 15 May 2025 It’s kind of hard to believe it’s been ten years since Rust 1.0 was released. I stopped working on Rust three years ago, and frankly, the last three years have been pretty rough. But 2025 is shaping up to be a really go…
- Thoughts on Bluesky Verification 21 Apr 2025 Today, Bluesky rolled out blue checks . And, I was given one. Now, I’m not the biggest fan of this sort of feature, however, I also don’t really think this kind of feature is for me. I really like the idea of domain ver…
- Thinking like a compiler: places and values in Rust 7 Apr 2025 A while back, someone on the internet asked about this syntax in Rust: * pointer_of_some_kind = blah; They wanted to know how the compiler understands this code, especially if the pointer wasn’t a reference, but a smart…
- Does unsafe undermine Rust's guarantees? 17 Mar 2025 When people first hear about unsafe in Rust, they often have questions. A very normal thing to ask is, “wait a minute, doesn’t this defeat the purpose?” And while it’s a perfectly reasonable question, the answer is both…
- Choosing Languages 13 Mar 2025 I tried to write this post yesterday, but I didn’t like my approach there. Last night, I had a conversation with one of my best friends about it, and he encouraged me to write this, but in a different way. I think this…
- A Happy Day for Rust 5 Mar 2025 A while back, I wrote A sad day for Rust about the Actix-web unsafe controversy. The short of it was, Actix-web was using some unsound unsafe code. When this was discovered, people responded pretty harshly, and the main…
- When should I use String vs &str? 16 Oct 2024 Rust has two main string types: String and &str . Sometimes, people argue that these two types make Rust code difficult to write, because you have to think about which one you should be using in a given situation. My ex…
Link verified 20 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
GitHub @steveklabnik Code and documentation.
Recent
- steveklabnik.com — My personal website. 4 Nov 2026
- foo — nothing 22 Apr 2026
- jujutsu-tutorial — trying to figure out this jujutsu thing 23 Feb 2026
Show 5 more
- docket 27 Jan 2026
- echoserver 2 Dec 2025
- what-is-a-squash-merge — What is a squash merge, anyway? 18 Nov 2025
- 15-minute-llm-blog — Can LLMs do what rails generate can do? 30 May 2025
- mdbook-trycmd — Smashing two things together 7 Feb 2025
Link verified 20 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
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