Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Results of Rust Survey 2016 – early draft for internal usage

docs.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 113 posts

Re: Results of Rust Survey 2016 – early draft for internal usage

#31

Post by StavrosK »

willvarfar wrote: post #3

The first diagram shows that 35.5% of respondents don't use, or stopped using , rust. Its a shame they don't break this down between those who have never used it vs those who have stopped using it. At the end of the results there's talk about why those who don't use rust don't use it, but again it doesn't separate out why people have never used it vs why people have stopped using it. I imagine it would be a very inte…

In the "people who have never used it" camp, I just started learning Rust and wrote a toy program yesterday. I was very pleasantly surprised by how helpful people in the IRC channel were, they were very patient and eager to help.

I'm really liking everything I'm seeing in Rust so far.

Re: Results of Rust Survey 2016 – early draft for internal usage

#32

Post by panic »

jjnoakes wrote: post #30
panic wrote: post #16

According to the survey, ~16% of people experience breakage with minor upgrades. Isn't this a pretty serious violation of semver?

I don't know the details in rust's case, but I wouldn't consider it a violation of semver if the code which broke in a minor update was doing bad things (maybe accidentally exploiting a bug or limitation in the language or implementation, probably by violating some requirement that wasn't checked properly, etc) and simply couldn't be correct code if left alone.

How do you define a "bad thing"? The semver spec is quite clear about "even the tiniest backwards incompatible changes" (http://semver.org/#if-even-the-tiniest-backwards-incompatibl...) requiring a major version bump.

Re: Results of Rust Survey 2016 – early draft for internal usage

#33

Post by kushti »

eximius wrote: post #6

Hmmm. That 20% of Rust users identify as part of an 'underrepresented group' does not seem like poor number. I would naively guess that it is a larger percentage than exists in the overall technical population. If that's correct, then bravo Rust! (If anyone knows about numbers along those lines, I'd love to hear about it.)

This part of survey is really weird and full of American racist bigotry. What does "Person of color" mean considering people all around the globe? In Africa or India whites are super-minorities so should they vote as "persons of color"?

Re: Results of Rust Survey 2016 – early draft for internal usage

#34

Post by Manishearth »

panic wrote: post #16

According to the survey, ~16% of people experience breakage with minor upgrades. Isn't this a pretty serious violation of semver?

I believe (but cannot verify) that these breakages were due to libraries breaking, especially libraries which evolve in lockstep with Rust internals like aster.

The main reason I believe this is because each release is tested against the entire ecosystem, and stability regressions are fixed. The only time that breakages in the ecosystem are okay are during a soundness fix where the broken library was doing something unsound.

Re: Results of Rust Survey 2016 – early draft for internal usage

#35

Post by lifthrasiir »

panic wrote: post #16

According to the survey, ~16% of people experience breakage with minor upgrades. Isn't this a pretty serious violation of semver?

The Rust compiler has been very stable after 1.0. The issue lies in the ecosystem, and people is still figuring out the best design and/or solution for doing things, while occasionally breaking them. The biggest ecosystem breakage so far was termed "libcpocalypse", which was a massive hit for everyone (transitively) depending on libc crate for FFI. The proper resolution is still in under way [1].

[1] https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/solve-std-os-raw-c-void/32...

Re: Results of Rust Survey 2016 – early draft for internal usage

#36

Post by fiedzia »

Manishearth wrote: post #28
akerro wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your work guys. I took part in the survey when I found it on Reddit. Yesterday I started my first project in two new technologies, Rust and GTK. That's completely different experience and perspective of designing code after years of C++(Qt) and Java(backend). Now I wish I was earlier adopter :)

Thank you! I'd love to hear more about your experience, though perhaps once you have worked a bit more on the project :) Eh, early adoption is overrated -- you have to fight through lack of docs, lack of libraries, and general ecosystem issues, all while the language keeps changing underneath you :P (Note that not everyone who works on Rust; or even who worked on this survey, is a guy)

Note that many people use the term "guy" without relation to sex or even being a person.

Re: Results of Rust Survey 2016 – early draft for internal usage

#37

Post by lifthrasiir »

panic wrote: post #32
jjnoakes wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know the details in rust's case, but I wouldn't consider it a violation of semver if the code which broke in a minor update was doing bad things (maybe accidentally exploiting a bug or limitation in the language or implementation, probably by violating some requirement that wasn't checked properly, etc) and simply couldn't be correct code if left alone.

How do you define a "bad thing"? The semver spec is quite clear about "even the tiniest backwards incompatible changes" ( http://semver.org/#if-even-the-tiniest-backwards-incompatibl... ) requiring a major version bump.

Cargo does not (yet) ensure that the library maintainer did follow the semver's doctrine.

Re: Results of Rust Survey 2016 – early draft for internal usage

#38

Post by Manishearth »

panic wrote: post #32
jjnoakes wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know the details in rust's case, but I wouldn't consider it a violation of semver if the code which broke in a minor update was doing bad things (maybe accidentally exploiting a bug or limitation in the language or implementation, probably by violating some requirement that wasn't checked properly, etc) and simply couldn't be correct code if left alone.

How do you define a "bad thing"? The semver spec is quite clear about "even the tiniest backwards incompatible changes" ( http://semver.org/#if-even-the-tiniest-backwards-incompatibl... ) requiring a major version bump.

Rust has its own definition of what it defines to be stable. Soundness fixes and bug fixes do not count, though as much as possible they will try to fix them in a way that breaks very little.

http://blog.rust-lang.org/2014/10/30/Stability.html

Post reply on HN