Can LLMs Build a Garbage‑Collector‑Free System Language? Inside Steve Klabnik’s Rue Project

Overview

Rue is a new system programming language created by Steve Klabnik. It aims to provide memory safety without a garbage collector while offering higher‑level ergonomics than languages such as Rust or Zig.

Design Goals

Memory‑safe execution without relying on garbage collection.

Accept a modest performance trade‑off in exchange for easier syntax and tooling.

Implementation written in Rust to leverage its safety guarantees.

Implementation Details

The compiler and standard library are written in Rust. Development heavily relies on Anthropic’s Claude large‑language model, which acts as a “co‑pilot” generating code snippets that are reviewed and integrated by Klabnik.

The open‑source repository is hosted at https://github.com/rue-language/rue. A collection of example programs, including a Fizz‑Buzz implementation, is available at https://github.com/rue-language/rue/tree/trunk/examples. The codebase currently contains roughly 70 000 lines of Rust code.

Current Capabilities

Fully functional compiler that produces native executables.

Basic command‑line tooling for building and running programs.

No language‑server protocol (LSP) support yet.

No dedicated package manager.

Development Workflow with Claude

Klabnik spends a few weeks iterating with Claude; the model suggests code, refines snippets, and Klabnik performs design decisions, code review, and large‑scale refactoring. He reports that two weeks of LLM‑assisted work yielded more progress than several months of manual effort.

Performance and Ergonomics

Rue targets a middle ground: it does not aim to match the raw performance of C/C++ or Rust, but it also avoids the overhead of a garbage collector. Early benchmarks (e.g., Fizz‑Buzz) show results comparable to Rust, indicating that the ergonomics gain does not dramatically degrade performance.

Future Outlook

The project will continue as long as the author finds it enjoyable. No immediate plans for mainstream adoption are set; community interest will determine the long‑term direction.

References

Repository: https://github.com/rue-language/rue Examples: https://github.com/rue-language/rue/tree/trunk/examples Blog updates:

https://rue-lang.dev/blog/week-one/