Why AWS loves Rust, and how we’d like to help • Hacker News Board

Re: Why AWS loves Rust, and how we’d like to help

#61

Post by wwright » Tue, Nov 24, 2020, 6:21 PM UTC

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #50

Am I just not "with it?" I don't see the appeal of Rust, but it gets the hottest talk in HN-town. Maybe it's just because I haven't worked long enough with C or C++ to complain about them (only about a decade or so), but I don't have any issues with those languages. And I find it wholly unappealing to abandon the existing corpus of literal decades of knowledge having been poured into those language ecosystems all in…

> but still came away with the feeling there was literally no one using Servo

Code from Servo is in every single copy of Firefox, so it's pretty popular as code goes.

> And I find it wholly unappealing to abandon the existing corpus of literal decades of knowledge having been poured into those language ecosystems all in the name of whatever it is that Rust delivers on. I just have too much experience in the industry to throw away my time and play with toys.

Rust doesn't throw away that corpus. Rust draws heavily on that corpus. It leverages LLVM (used to compile C/C++), integrates with C libraries, integrates with GDB, draws a ton of design decisions from actual experience using C++, and so on.

It's a tool that runs inside Firefox, AWS, Microsoft, and a lot of other high-reliability, high-performance areas. It may be young, but it's quickly building (IMO compelling) evidence that it's very much not a "toy." ;)

Re: Why AWS loves Rust, and how we’d like to help

#62

Post by dzonga » Tue, Nov 24, 2020, 6:22 PM UTC

adamnemecek wrote: post #5

Mozilla should have spun-out a Rust consulting company.

people like you should be getting paid the big bucks, not the current exec's at mozilla.

Re: Why AWS loves Rust, and how we’d like to help

#63

Post by blitblitblit » Tue, Nov 24, 2020, 6:23 PM UTC

steveklabnik wrote: post #37

xiphias2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully it will be more open with showing where the sponsorship money goes (I hope most of it will go to developers and Rust contributors like you) than other foundations that I don't want to name here.

The foundation is being set up by the Rust team, to be clear. I think with "more open" you're suggesting that this is like, an offshoot of mofo or something.

Does this mean the "Media Guidelines" is going away? If we want to redistribute cargo or rust with some patched changes, I'd like to be able to do it without coming back and asking for trademark approval every time. Even if the resulting binary says "unofficial/unsupported build".

Re: Why AWS loves Rust, and how we’d like to help

#64

Post by __0x01 » Tue, Nov 24, 2020, 6:23 PM UTC

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #50

Am I just not "with it?" I don't see the appeal of Rust, but it gets the hottest talk in HN-town. Maybe it's just because I haven't worked long enough with C or C++ to complain about them (only about a decade or so), but I don't have any issues with those languages. And I find it wholly unappealing to abandon the existing corpus of literal decades of knowledge having been poured into those language ecosystems all in…

You are not alone. I think the use of method chaining especially takes away from the aesthetic of newer programming languages.

Re: Why AWS loves Rust, and how we’d like to help

#65

Post by est31 » Tue, Nov 24, 2020, 6:23 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #51

johnnycerberus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Applications of Java and Rust do not overlap. As a big data engineer, Rust does not provide any advantage to me. Good luck rewritting all the big data tools from Java (Elasticsearch, Spark, Kafka, Hadoop, Neo4j, Deeplearning4j, Cassandra, Solr, Arrow, OrientDB) and all the scientific stuff from C++ (Eigen, Tensorflow, PyTorch, Jax, Halide, OpenCV and the multitude of resources for CUDA and OpenCL) and databases (MySQ…

> the browsers are all C++ You mean one is already shipping Rust and another seems to be on track to shipping it soon?

Chrome is "on track"? Last I remember they had a document explaining why it's not a good idea for them. I disagree with it, and would very much wish for Chrome to ship Rust, but they don't seem to be interested for now.

Re: Why AWS loves Rust, and how we’d like to help

#66

Post by steveklabnik » Tue, Nov 24, 2020, 6:24 PM UTC

xiphias2 wrote: post #57

steveklabnik wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The foundation is being set up by the Rust team, to be clear. I think with "more open" you're suggesting that this is like, an offshoot of mofo or something.

I don't understand your answer completely, but I guess you know that the Mozilla execs are not the most trusted people right now by HN folks, so ,,offshot of mofo'' doesn't sound as good as Rust foundation by Rust core contributors :) Anyways I really hope it will be successful!

What I am saying is that the Rust foundation is being set up 100% by "Rust core contributors" and not by "Mozilla execs."

Me too, and thanks :)

Re: Why AWS loves Rust, and how we’d like to help

#67

Post by piercebot » Tue, Nov 24, 2020, 6:25 PM UTC

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #50

Am I just not "with it?" I don't see the appeal of Rust, but it gets the hottest talk in HN-town. Maybe it's just because I haven't worked long enough with C or C++ to complain about them (only about a decade or so), but I don't have any issues with those languages. And I find it wholly unappealing to abandon the existing corpus of literal decades of knowledge having been poured into those language ecosystems all in…

One of the reasons it's so enchanting is how it manages memory without the use of a garbage collector thanks to the magic of lifetimes. Couple that with performance that's on par with C/C++ and design choices that encourage testing and documentation... there are a lot of technical reasons to love Rust.

The welcoming community is another great reason, but I'll let community leaders speak to that point.

In terms of how the language looks... the important thing is that `rustfmt` standardizes this, so you only have to learn how to read one style, and not a different style for every developer you work with.

Re: Why AWS loves Rust, and how we’d like to help

#68

Post by steveklabnik » Tue, Nov 24, 2020, 6:25 PM UTC

blitblitblit wrote: post #63

steveklabnik wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The foundation is being set up by the Rust team, to be clear. I think with "more open" you're suggesting that this is like, an offshoot of mofo or something.

Does this mean the "Media Guidelines" is going away? If we want to redistribute cargo or rust with some patched changes, I'd like to be able to do it without coming back and asking for trademark approval every time. Even if the resulting binary says "unofficial/unsupported build".

I can't make any particular statements about what an organization that doesn't even exist yet may or may not do with its property.

Who is "we", in this case, out of curiosity?

Re: Why AWS loves Rust, and how we’d like to help

#69

Post by wolco2 » Tue, Nov 24, 2020, 6:25 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #51

johnnycerberus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Applications of Java and Rust do not overlap. As a big data engineer, Rust does not provide any advantage to me. Good luck rewritting all the big data tools from Java (Elasticsearch, Spark, Kafka, Hadoop, Neo4j, Deeplearning4j, Cassandra, Solr, Arrow, OrientDB) and all the scientific stuff from C++ (Eigen, Tensorflow, PyTorch, Jax, Halide, OpenCV and the multitude of resources for CUDA and OpenCL) and databases (MySQ…

> the browsers are all C++ You mean one is already shipping Rust and another seems to be on track to shipping it soon?

In fairness the one using Rust has fallen apart on my windows 7 machine since the rewrite.

It would be unfair to blame rust. But that example doesn't provide confidence that switching from c would be a great idea.

Re: Why AWS loves Rust, and how we’d like to help

#70

Post by sfkdjf9j3j » Tue, Nov 24, 2020, 6:25 PM UTC

bsaul wrote: post #54

So, Apple got swift, Google got Dart and Go, i guess Amazon is trying to "have" rust ? I hope Amazon will keep the open source nature of Rust. This post is obviously from an engineer, but i fear the day business people will start looking into ways to leverage the contribution Amazon made to Rust.

I don't think that's what's going on here. Swift and Go were both projects that Apple and Google respectively dedicated a lot of engineering resources to growing into mainstream popularity. AWS would have to spend a decade stewarding Rust the same way to get the same "halo effect".