31–40 of 55 posts
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rust compiles to web assembly
What kinds of things could you do with web assembly that you can’t do in native JavaScript? I know very little about web development.
The Go Tour ( https://tour.golang.org ) is an excellent guide to getting started to Go, and I really wish something like that existed for rust. I have no excuse for not being the one to make it (outside of not at all knowing Rust well enough) but I selfishly wish someone would.
https://learning-rust.github.io/index.html https://rustbyexample.com
My problem wasn't that good documentation wasn't available, it certainly is. The first and second editions of the rust book rust book (https://doc.rust-lang.org/book) are what I read through and they're great.
What I meant was very literal -- I don't know of a site with Go tour's exact (or close to exact) interface, where you can run through ~30/40 slides (that's how long go tour is AFAIK) and write some code right in the browser to get a feel for the language.
Rust is considerably more complex than Go, so I'm not sure it could be so succint, but I can say that at least for me, going through Go Tour really did make me feel more confident in starting a project with Golang.
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Give me something that can run ReactDOM.renderToString() faster, and I'm all ears. Until that day (and I'm kinda hoping it comes) I'm a bit stuck.
I'm not very familiar with the React ecosystem but I thought the entire point was letting the client-side handle rendering and passing structured data via API calls? renderToString() sounds like it's doing what every scripting language and templating framework has been doing for the past 20 years?
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Rust and Go, while really similar, kind of are different in use -- the key differntiator is memory management, and memory safety. For a LOT of applications, this isn't necessary or a big deal (see: just about every program written in a language that isn't c/c++). I see Golang replacing Java longterm and Rust replacing C/C++ (yeah, even C) due to the memory safety and preciseness + speed it offers. It may never be tru…
> I see [..] Rust replacing C/C++ (yeah, even C) To me, the possibility of Rust replacing C is the most interesting aspect of the language. (I'm not sure I see it replacing C++, but maybe competing with it; choose between evolution or revolution!) The general hype around Rust is fascinating to me though. I assume it's mostly driven by former C/C++ programmers, but the process has been noisy enough to attract attentio…
I think Rust is interesting to the people already using non-GC languages is precisely because it offers the speed of C/C++ with LESS of the footgun aspect. Writing C/C++ is accessible and familiar, but it is far from simple, there are tons of pitfalls. Rust has less of those, and takes a modern approach to much of it's toolchain bits and ergonomics.
> I'm a Rust newbie and haven't benchmarked anything, but the sense I get from the docs is that it theoretically can be as fast depending on how much you limit yourself. Kinda like how C++ can be as fast as C, if written with care.
Almost axiomatically, if Rust could be built 100% with ONLY zero cost abstractions, then it could certainly be as fast as C. Concretely, I don't think that's possible, because usually abstractions will cost you something even if it's just a single extra function call redirection. However, you can definitely get to a point where the difference is negligible, and the downsides (maintainability taking a nosedive) make the tradeoff worth it.
I think if you were to compare rust and C overhead in terms of function calls, slices and the like , you'd just be comparing compilers and micro optimizations implemented in both. I think it's kind of hard to test for the things that really make rust shine -- it's all the time you DON'T spend on race condition bugs, and the time you DON'T spend debugging pointer issues.
I know that this is irrelevant, but is it worth the trouble to learn an esoteric language such as Rust? For me it seems a waste of time to learn a language along with its ecosystem where there are few job prospects. Right now Go seems to be on an upward trajectory, and despite its ugliness and how primitive it is, it is the job which can pays off when hunting for jobs.
To write Rust you have to be very conscious of how you're sharing data between functions, structs, and threads. This is a common source of bugs even in GC languages, so working with a compiler that will point out your mistakes teaches you how to avoid such issues in other, less prescriptive languages.
I also think rust is a lot of fun! I haven't had a chance to use it professionally yet, and it doesn't seem to have made much impact in industry yet, but I think it will get there. Right now it's pretty hard to write networked services (the main market for Go it seems), but that will get a lot better this year as libraries mature and async/await is stabilized.
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Rust and Go, while really similar, kind of are different in use -- the key differntiator is memory management, and memory safety. For a LOT of applications, this isn't necessary or a big deal (see: just about every program written in a language that isn't c/c++). I see Golang replacing Java longterm and Rust replacing C/C++ (yeah, even C) due to the memory safety and preciseness + speed it offers. It may never be tru…
> Knowing X language isn't what makes a good developer, it's knowing some sufficiently multi-paradigm langauge ... True enough as far as it goes. But in practical terms, as platforms have multiplied in number and increased in surface area, being a useful and/or marketable developer means in-depth knowledge of specific platforms. It's much harder to spin up quickly on a platform than a mere language. However well you…
- mobile development in particular is the worst possible case of this. mobile platform companies are in the best case optimized only for their own case, and in the worst case maliciously trying to create developer walled gardens. However, I would point out that knowing one of these often helps in knowing the other (Android vs iOS) -- there are often 1:1 concepts that map over, because in the end what you want to do is very much the same, and the way the platforms have modeled how to do certain things is often similar.
- AWS is not really a programming language, even if you could CloudFormation templates, which surely will be turing complete if they aren't considered to be already. "Familiarity with aws" roughly equals "familiarity with deploying an application to managed remote servers", which is orthogonal (IMO) to pure application development, but is increasingly a required skill.
I do agree that being a convincing generalist is difficult, and I think this is why generic `Backend Developer` or `Software Engineer` positions often pay more than `Mobile developer` or `Frontend Developer` positions (at least in my experience they have). This is also why people try to hire for "smarts" in interviews rather than just testing language/syntax knowledge -- generalists make for better cogs ("are more fungible" would be the nicer way to say it I guess).
I know that this is irrelevant, but is it worth the trouble to learn an esoteric language such as Rust? For me it seems a waste of time to learn a language along with its ecosystem where there are few job prospects. Right now Go seems to be on an upward trajectory, and despite its ugliness and how primitive it is, it is the job which can pays off when hunting for jobs.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=java,golang
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https://learning-rust.github.io/index.html https://rustbyexample.com
Right now the second link you posted isn't loading, so I'm not sure if that is something that matches the Go Tour interface (maybe it is, and it's not loading because it's failing to init some virtualized environment for test code to run in?). My problem wasn't that good documentation wasn't available, it certainly is. The first and second editions of the rust book rust book ( https://doc.rust-lang.org/book ) are wha…
The Go Tour ( https://tour.golang.org ) is an excellent guide to getting started to Go, and I really wish something like that existed for rust. I have no excuse for not being the one to make it (outside of not at all knowing Rust well enough) but I selfishly wish someone would.
https://learning-rust.github.io/index.html https://rustbyexample.com
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Knowing X language isn't what makes a good developer, it's knowing some sufficiently multi-paradigm langauge ... True enough as far as it goes. But in practical terms, as platforms have multiplied in number and increased in surface area, being a useful and/or marketable developer means in-depth knowledge of specific platforms. It's much harder to spin up quickly on a platform than a mere language. However well you…
I agree with that point, except for two minor things: - mobile development in particular is the worst possible case of this. mobile platform companies are in the best case optimized only for their own case, and in the worst case maliciously trying to create developer walled gardens. However, I would point out that knowing one of these often helps in knowing the other (Android vs iOS) -- there are often 1:1 concepts t…
I was offering AWS as an example of another platform rather than a language. If you're called on to (for example) implement a bunch of microservice type stuff, there's quite a bit to learn about RDS/dynamo/lambdas/IAM etc, and then all the quite complex deployment stuff to make it truly production ready.
I think in all these cases, the language is a relatively trivial component. I generally can get quite productive in a new language (that isn't greatly paradigmatically different, ie. allowing for exceptions like Haskell, Rust etc) in a couple of days to a week. A new platform? More like weeks to months.