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Two years of Rust

blog.rust-lang.org

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Re: Two years of Rust

#21

Post by pjmlp »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #4
maplant wrote: post #2

A few years ago I was a C evangelist. C++ was and more so now is a fine language with a lot of features I want. But Rust has that simplicity in a systems language that I crave that lets me do my own thing. That elegence. It's my favourite language by far. Keep it up!

Simplicity? Modula-3 was simple, fast, and safe. PreScheme was less type-checked but powerful and simple. You can learn how to use them in a day coming from an imperative or functional language. Rust looks like it gives users extra power/safety with quite a bit of a learning curve (most say weeks to months) due to extra complexity. Definitely not simple, though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modula-3 https://en.m.w…

Given the work being done in .NET Native and the planned features for C# 7.2, the language is starting to look like the spiritual descendent from Modula-3.

Re: Two years of Rust

#22

Post by cwzwarich »

webkike wrote: post #8
nickpsecurity wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simplicity? Modula-3 was simple, fast, and safe. PreScheme was less type-checked but powerful and simple. You can learn how to use them in a day coming from an imperative or functional language. Rust looks like it gives users extra power/safety with quite a bit of a learning curve (most say weeks to months) due to extra complexity. Definitely not simple, though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modula-3 https://en.m.w…

It's definitely simpler than most other systems languages in what it gives you access too. Go, D, C++, C# are all far more complicated than Rust is. I would argue Modula-3 is not as simple because it contains a garbage collector - thus making the connection between written and compiled code less simple. Don't know much about pre scheme

How is Rust simpler? In terms of cognitive complexity on the part of the user, Modula-3 is much simpler; it is easier for a programmer to learn to write new Modula-3 code and correctly read Modula-3 code than it is for Rust code.

In terms of implementation complexity, Modula-3 is also much simpler, despite the existence of a GC. A Modula-3 spec would be a great deal smaller than an equivalently detailed Rust spec. Many people have independently implemented Modula-3, whereas an independent implementation of Rust is effectively impossible, due to all of the unspecified implementation-defined behaviors. If you told me I had 1 year to implement either language from scratch, I would much rather choose Modula-3.

Re: Two years of Rust

#23

Post by simplehuman »

kibwen wrote: post #5

Yet again allow me to shill for this year's Rust Community Survey, which closes June 12 and is open even to people who've never used Rust: https://blog.rust-lang.org/2017/05/03/survey.html (Yes, I know it's linked from the OP, but who reads that anyway?)

Thanks, just filled it now. I indeed managed to miss the survey link when reading the post.

Re: Two years of Rust

#24

Post by steveklabnik »

omaranto wrote: post #16
brandur wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not being hindered by the compiler telling you what you can and can't do; freeing yourself from the write-compile-debug cycle, reducing it to repl-done; etc. Yeah, I certainly understand various language trade-offs, but in my experience any of these early wins of interpreted languages come back to haunt you at significant cost. I saw someone use the analogy of a credit card on here before: purchases are very easy t…

Compiled languages can have REPLs too. Common Lisp and Haskell come to mind.

https://github.com/murarth/rusti was the start of one; it's not particularly maintained these days.

Re: Two years of Rust

#25

Post by skariel123 »

omaranto wrote: post #16
brandur wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not being hindered by the compiler telling you what you can and can't do; freeing yourself from the write-compile-debug cycle, reducing it to repl-done; etc. Yeah, I certainly understand various language trade-offs, but in my experience any of these early wins of interpreted languages come back to haunt you at significant cost. I saw someone use the analogy of a credit card on here before: purchases are very easy t…

Compiled languages can have REPLs too. Common Lisp and Haskell come to mind.

and scala

Re: Two years of Rust

#26

Post by steveklabnik »

cwzwarich wrote: post #22
webkike wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely simpler than most other systems languages in what it gives you access too. Go, D, C++, C# are all far more complicated than Rust is. I would argue Modula-3 is not as simple because it contains a garbage collector - thus making the connection between written and compiled code less simple. Don't know much about pre scheme

How is Rust simpler? In terms of cognitive complexity on the part of the user, Modula-3 is much simpler; it is easier for a programmer to learn to write new Modula-3 code and correctly read Modula-3 code than it is for Rust code. In terms of implementation complexity, Modula-3 is also much simpler, despite the existence of a GC. A Modula-3 spec would be a great deal smaller than an equivalently detailed Rust spec. Ma…

There are two alternative implementations of Rust in the works; one is _almost_ able to compile rustc at this point.

Re: Two years of Rust

#27

Post by ben_jones »

brandur wrote: post #3

I'm consistently blown away by just how good the project management for this language is. It's not just the forward progress that the language is making (which is considerable), but also just how well they package the information up into a form that the rest of us who are not involved day to day can digest, like has been done here. Another example is the "This Week in Rust" newsletter which takes progress that would'…

In your opinion what are some of the things wrong with Rust? Genuinely curious as someone who operates at the higher level of the stack (web development) but is interested in learning something lower: C++, Rust, etc.

Re: Two years of Rust

#28

Post by kibwen »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #4
maplant wrote: post #2

A few years ago I was a C evangelist. C++ was and more so now is a fine language with a lot of features I want. But Rust has that simplicity in a systems language that I crave that lets me do my own thing. That elegence. It's my favourite language by far. Keep it up!

Simplicity? Modula-3 was simple, fast, and safe. PreScheme was less type-checked but powerful and simple. You can learn how to use them in a day coming from an imperative or functional language. Rust looks like it gives users extra power/safety with quite a bit of a learning curve (most say weeks to months) due to extra complexity. Definitely not simple, though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modula-3 https://en.m.w…

The Modula-3 Evangelism Strike Force! We meet again! :)

Re: Two years of Rust

#29

Post by webkike »

placeybordeaux wrote: post #20
webkike wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose it's the difference between the computational model presented by the language verses the computational model presented by the computer. A combination of how many components require some runtime environment to exist and how many disparate language features there are. Not an intuitive definition of simple for sure, but this is in the context of a system's programming language. In terms of just plain simple, I…

So the fact that that is a scheduler and a garbage collector in go means that by your definition even the simplest go program has a large complexity cost?

Not necessarily large, but it factors into the mean complexity cost.

Re: Two years of Rust

#30

Post by cwzwarich »

steveklabnik wrote: post #26
cwzwarich wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Rust simpler? In terms of cognitive complexity on the part of the user, Modula-3 is much simpler; it is easier for a programmer to learn to write new Modula-3 code and correctly read Modula-3 code than it is for Rust code. In terms of implementation complexity, Modula-3 is also much simpler, despite the existence of a GC. A Modula-3 spec would be a great deal smaller than an equivalently detailed Rust spec. Ma…

There are two alternative implementations of Rust in the works; one is _almost_ able to compile rustc at this point.

What are these implementations? The one I immediately found by searching (https://github.com/thepowersgang/mrustc) is accompanied by an explicit nongoal to correctly implement the language. It also doesn't seem particularly independent from rustc, given the similarities in implementation strategy and the fact that some parts look like rustc code converted to C++.
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