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How to not rewrite it in Rust

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Re: How to not rewrite it in Rust

#121

Post by discreteevent »

chongli wrote: post #82
skrebbel wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like the phrase "elite quitters". I wonder if, as a stereotype, it's unique to the software industry.

No, it also happens in professional sports. Star players leave the teams that drafted them to look for better opportunities. It seems to be an inevitability that small market teams draft and develop star players who then quit on the fans for a big contract or a chance to play with other stars in the big city.

That's true but the difference of course with a star player is that the hiring team can examine in detail the past performances of the player. They usually only hire if the player is competent.

The problem is that the elite quitter is usually incompetent. They are capable of learning some new things. But they are incompetent in the sense that they are incapable of seeing that the new thing is often the same as or worse than the old thing. They are incompetent in the sense that they have a low attention span and do not follow up on the things they do so they never learn from their mistakes. They often love complexity etc etc

So the hiring team cannot see these details directly. It's up to them to have competent interviewers to flush this out. But of course they are often in awe of the latest fad themselves and so on it goes.

Re: How to not rewrite it in Rust

#122

Post by discreteevent »

empthought wrote: post #90
jchw wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it’s not. You didn’t write it the first time, and grow from writing it the first time. Writing and shipping something in a new programming language is a fantastic way to learn both. This has only become contentious as people try to come up for a reason why rewriting things in Rust is bad, when really it is about as benign as trends go. I never heard the same complaints about rewriting things in Go (another languag…

Rewriting software written using Python, Java, and Ruby in Go is entirely different from rewriting software written using C and C++ in Rust. Go has easily quantifiable advantages over those other runtimes regardless of the original code's correctness.

Can't see what you would really gain rewriting from Java to Go.

Re: How to not rewrite it in Rust

#123

Post by vast »

The linked RIIR post pretty much described 2016 the behaviour of people shown in this thread. It is hilarious that seeing the arguing for RIIR in this context.

Rewriting in some language is a matter of skill and preference. To even consider a rewrite there should be a rational reason, i.e. it is broken or can't work in the ecosystem.

For fun and learning you can do what you want, of course.

Re: How to not rewrite it in Rust

#125

Post by mannykannot »

aswanson wrote: post #92
royjacobs wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a previous job I worked with someone who didn't see a buzzword they didn't like. Since nobody was stopping them, they designed an incredibly convoluted system using all the latest tech. In the end we replaced it with a JVM server and a Postgres database. I occasionally check their LinkedIn and they're still spending 12-15 months every time at companies, being CTO or Big Data Strategist or whatever.

Ambition and incompetence. Nice combo.

The Dunning-Kruger career path: persuade the people hiring to think that you are more competent than you are.

Re: How to not rewrite it in Rust

#126

Post by infogulch »

atq2119 wrote: post #39
infogulch wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How/why is a dist tarball not exactly the same as a zipped up git tree?

The parent you're replying to answers that question. And if your question is meant rhetorically, it doesn't contribute to the discussion either.

I'm asking genuinely.

No, parent answers the question, "What is the difference between the git tree and a dist tarball?" Which is self-evidently (and unhelpfully) "you don't need autotools installed with the dist tarball". My questions are: Why does this difference exist? Why would you not track everything necessary to build a library in git? How is the dist tarball built differently than just zipping the current git tree?

Re: How to not rewrite it in Rust

#127

Post by StreamBright »

steveklabnik wrote: post #76
StreamBright wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is helpful but in general what is a problem of having strings and trivial functions to convert something (like bytes) to strings? Maybe I am missing the point.

The process of "functions to convert bytes to a string" is called "encoding". The problem is, there's no universal way to do it, so you need to choose one. You need to know what the bytes mean, and then convert them into whatever representation that you need. It is unfortunate that you’ve been downvoted for asking a question.

Thank you very much. I am going to read up this because I think I am missing out on crucial details.

It is unfortunate how HN is nowadays but I don’t care if I can still learn a lot from people like you.

Re: How to not rewrite it in Rust

#128

Post by Skunkleton »

adrianmonk wrote: post #74

> at best, the temptation to RiiR is unproductive I think there are probably three cases here: (1) You have perfectly good software and your only motivation to rewrite is infatuation with how great Rust seems. In this case, yes, that's unproductive. (Infatuation-driven design is poor engineering and is a fairly widespread problem in the software industry.) (2) You already have other reasons to want to rewrite (design…

(4) You want to develop new components in rust, but it has to integrate with your existing components somehow.

Re: How to not rewrite it in Rust

#129

Post by steveklabnik »

StreamBright wrote: post #127
steveklabnik wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The process of "functions to convert bytes to a string" is called "encoding". The problem is, there's no universal way to do it, so you need to choose one. You need to know what the bytes mean, and then convert them into whatever representation that you need. It is unfortunate that you’ve been downvoted for asking a question.

Thank you very much. I am going to read up this because I think I am missing out on crucial details. It is unfortunate how HN is nowadays but I don’t care if I can still learn a lot from people like you.

Happy to help. Feel free to post questions on users.rust-lang.org as well; people are super happy to elaborate on any question, no matter how big or small.
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