Rust's language ergonomics initiative

Post by nathancahill » Sat, Mar 04, 2017, 2:43 AM UTC

hackuser wrote: post #87

modeless wrote: post #15

Are there plans to do user studies? 10 minutes watching new users code in Rust will give you better ideas than 10 weeks thinking about the problem in your head. I feel like there's a real lack of user testing in software development tools land. If you're developing software for unsophisticated users it's obvious that you should be doing user testing, but it's an often ignored fact that developers are users too! APIs,…

> 10 minutes watching new users code in Rust will give you better ideas than 10 weeks thinking about the problem in your head. I'd add: Do you want to focus on new or experienced users? For example, when implementing systems that will be used 8 hrs/day by its users, we look only at efficiency for experienced users (unless the political situation requires placating the noobs). They will be noobs for a day or maybe a c…

Post by staticassertion » Sat, Mar 04, 2017, 2:46 AM UTC

twic wrote: post #100

staticassertion wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would this in rust: if number { true } else { false } If it's the last expression it will implicitly return the values. Easily fits on one line.

My one puny objection to this is that rustfmt won't put the arms on a single line, but will always break and indent around the blocks. That makes Rust's expression-if considerably more verbose than what Perl has, or even the ternary operator.

Post by __david__ » Sat, Mar 04, 2017, 2:57 AM UTC

ww520 wrote: post #169

kbenson wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it that different? Assuming you would use '?' and ':', presumable we might see both the following then: let foo = foo()?; let bar = bar() ? this() : that();

? already has different forms as of now. You can do foo()?; or foo()?.bar(). People don't seem to be confused. expr ? expr : expr is just another form. The ternary form is so well known that I doubt people have problem recognizing it.

    foo()?.bar()
    (foo()?).bar()

Post by JoshTriplett » Sat, Mar 04, 2017, 3:15 AM UTC

ww520 wrote: post #168

JoshTriplett wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree that Rust ought to build in support for the error-chaining pattern. I think I'd still prefer to have a named type, but the standard library should provide a standard way to construct that type. > 3. It's the other way around &str to String, having to call .to_string() everywhere. Make it implicit if the type expects a String while a &str is passed in. You can't turn a reference like &str into an ow…

> I think I'd still prefer to have a named type, but the standard library should provide a standard way to construct that type. Having ad-hoc error union Result per function make it lightweight, and less friction in writing code. I would go one step further, let the compiler build the error union automatically. fn func1() -> Result { let foo = foo()?; // might return Error1 let bar = bar()?; // might return Error2 ..…

Post by hyperpape » Sat, Mar 04, 2017, 3:25 AM UTC

nathancahill wrote: post #171

hackuser wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 10 minutes watching new users code in Rust will give you better ideas than 10 weeks thinking about the problem in your head. I'd add: Do you want to focus on new or experienced users? For example, when implementing systems that will be used 8 hrs/day by its users, we look only at efficiency for experienced users (unless the political situation requires placating the noobs). They will be noobs for a day or maybe a c…

What's the language that takes that to the extreme? I remember it being used for fintech(?) or spreadsheets and I remember seeing one-liners that look like someone just mashed the keyboard. Apparently incredibly efficient once you are an expert in the language.