Actix – Actor Framework for Rust
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Actix – Actor Framework for Rust
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Re: Actix – Actor Framework for Rust
#2Whats the state of Rust if I wanted to get into it for backend development? I've looked briefly into Rocket and liked it but didn't delve too deep, I understand Actix is one of the most mature?
Re: Actix – Actor Framework for Rust
#3Whats the state of Rust if I wanted to get into it for backend development? I've looked briefly into Rocket and liked it but didn't delve too deep, I understand Actix is one of the most mature?
Re: Actix – Actor Framework for Rust
#4Can somebody please summarize the outcome of the recent kerfuffle? I don't mind which way it came out, but it seems worth knowing what it was.
I absolutely don't want any even-slightly-inflammatory answer.
Re: Actix – Actor Framework for Rust
#5Whats the state of Rust if I wanted to get into it for backend development? I've looked briefly into Rocket and liked it but didn't delve too deep, I understand Actix is one of the most mature?
I wouldn't call Actix the most mature, but it's definitely the one that gets talked about the most.
I built a fairly complex backend directly on top of Hyper[0] (it doesn't even involve that much glue, really) in 2016 and have updated it as Rust and Hyper have matured. It's actually a delight to work on, and I brought a new hire on board recently who had no trouble getting up to speed, since everything is just straightforward, idiomatic Rust.
I've looked at basically every Rust "web framework" that's been released since 2016, and I can't see any of them simplifying the codebase enough to justify using them. Quite a few of these frameworks result in code that isn't obvious to a Rust programmer who hasn't used that framework before, too, which I consider a disadvantage (I prefer obvious over clever).
[0] edited to add for those that may not be aware: Hyper is a client & server HTTP library. Many/most of the frameworks are built on top of it.
Re: Actix – Actor Framework for Rust
#6What is the difference between the actor model and object oriented programming? It seems to me like they are basically the same paradigm but with all the names changed, and some additional restrictions like all messages being async and objects only being able to process one message at a time. Why is it necessary to create a whole new paradigm just to enforce such a style?
Re: Actix – Actor Framework for Rust
#7Whats the state of Rust if I wanted to get into it for backend development? I've looked briefly into Rocket and liked it but didn't delve too deep, I understand Actix is one of the most mature?
At present Rust's primary focus is systems programming language, it will take another 3-5 years to be a viable web programming that too in a niche area. I doubt the libraries will be mature enough to provide easy way to build the way other languages do.
If you know Ruby or Python or C# or Swift or Go language or Dart or TypeScript or JavaScript don't change to Rust yet. It's far far away from having similar library, documentation and developer eco-system.
I believe Haskell has more mature web development eco-system than Rust at present, but they also suffer from same issue most libraries do not have enough documentation and it's tiring to go through the library code to understand how to use it. But if you want to do Rust, why not try Haskell, you will learn much more and it offers a new way of functional programming. Indeed Rust, Swift, C++, Java, Python, Ruby, JavaScript etc. all borrowed ideas from Haskell or OCaml. Indeed Rust was initially written in OCaml
Actix which is the most popular framework in Rust just had a core developer who left it and was dead for a while before community tried to revive it. [1] [2]
Re: Actix – Actor Framework for Rust
#8Can somebody please summarize the outcome of the recent kerfuffle? I don't mind which way it came out, but it seems worth knowing what it was. I absolutely don't want any even-slightly-inflammatory answer.
The project has a new leader now: https://github.com/actix/actix-web/issues/1289
Re: Actix – Actor Framework for Rust
#9Can somebody please summarize the outcome of the recent kerfuffle? I don't mind which way it came out, but it seems worth knowing what it was. I absolutely don't want any even-slightly-inflammatory answer.
This is from memory, I would welcome any corrections.
Actix was written with a lot of unsafe code[0], which some people considered unnecessary and potentially dangerous in a web framework. In some cases the unsafe code may have been performing better than equivalent safe code. In other cases, it was possible to rewrite with safe code without losing performance.
People submitted patches to replace unsafe code with safe code. The maintainer of Actix responded with hostility to some of these patches, and (at least for some of the patches) did not seem to see the reason why people wanted these changes.
Subsequently, a lot of hostility was directed at the maintainer on various public Internet fora.
Ultimately, the maintainer of Actix deleted the repository from GitHub, but then had a change of heart and restored it, with a new maintainer.
[0] unsafe code according to the Rust definition of unsafe: https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ch19-01-unsafe-rust.html
Re: Actix – Actor Framework for Rust
#10This framework's core developer has left, probably new community took it over. Hopefully it will continue to be supported and developed.
Rust still has a way to go for being a mature eco-system for doing any serious web programming work. Given the focus of Rust on systems programming, I will still be careful to consider it for anything web related.
Hopefully situations like abandoning a project suddenly will not happen again. [1] [2]