Yes-rs: A fast, memory-safe rewrite of the classic Unix yes command

Nature and Intent of the Project

• Many commenters note the huge LOC difference vs GNU yes and quickly recognize this as satire rather than a serious reimplementation.
• Those who actually open the single source file generally describe it as “art” or “committing to the bit” rather than a shallow meme.
• The project is read as a parody of “blazingly fast, memory-safe Rust” marketing and over-engineered tooling for trivial problems.

What Counts as a “Joke” (and Poe’s Law)

• Extended subthread debates whether something must be funny to be a “joke,” with references to academic work on humor and play.
• Some emphasize that intent and meta-communication make it a joke, regardless of whether everyone laughs; others insist a joke must be funny.
• Several people admit they initially thought it might be serious Rust “cargo cult” code until deep into the file, citing Poe’s law and the real-world existence of similarly overwrought code.

Rust, Unsafe, and “Safety” Satire

• The README’s “100% Rust – no unsafe” claim is contrasted with an explicit unsafe block in the code; this sparks a (partly serious, mostly tongue‑in‑cheek) debate about unsafe Rust.
• Some criticize this as false advertising and an example of why surfacing unsafe is important; others lean into the bit, pretending Rust is “always safe” and misunderstanding is impossible.
• A parallel point is made that other “serious” Rust implementations hide their unsafe calls in libraries, so safety guarantees are often only apparent on the surface.

Code Size, Performance, and Simplicity

• Commenters compare GNU yes, OpenBSD yes, uutils’ Rust yes, and handwritten C/assembly/Odin versions.
• Benchmarks show huge throughput differences due to buffering strategies and avoiding per-line syscalls; GNU’s highly optimized version is far faster than naive loops.
• Some argue that for a tool like yes, ultra-optimization and extra complexity are unnecessary and bug-prone; others use this as an example of how real “blazing fast” often means “much more code.”

LLMs, Training Data, and Internet “Garbage”

• One thread worries that joke repositories pollute LLM training data and hinder AI replacing developers.
• Responses counter that most of GitHub and the web is already noisy, the web is for humans, and well-written joke code is often higher quality than real corporate code.
• People note that LLMs already absorb sarcasm and trolling, contributing to “hallucinations,” and joke about needing models that can reliably navigate Poe’s law.

Enterprise and Ecosystem Satire

• Multiple comments extend the joke: demands for microservice-based “yes-as-a-service,” Kubernetes/Helm deployments, SOC2/GDPR compliance, and design-pattern-heavy “enterprise” Rust.
• Related joke projects (enterprise FizzBuzz, absurd “hello-world.rs”) are cited as the same genre: overcomplicated rewrites of trivial utilities.
• The fake deprecation notice and proliferation of successor crates parody churn and fragmentation in modern ecosystems.