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

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

#81

Post by m463 »

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…

I kind of think it's ugly too.

But I think back many years, when I was put on a project written in Perl. At first I balked at the syntax.

I can see $foo on the right of the equals sign, but on the left? And $_ and @_ and regular expressions everywhere like line noise.

But working with it for a bit... and all of that just disappeared as I became fluent. They just started becoming idioms in my head. And after a while, I found Perl the most expressive language I've ever worked with.

So, maybe you just have to get over the hump?

(But yeah, I thought python was too ordered, but I switched and it's pretty much my favorite language presently)

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

#82

Post by dagmx »

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'm not sure that's a reasonable take.

Apple and Google both use Rust too. Amazon also uses other languages.

The languages you mentioned were developed in house by those companies, rust is independent

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

#83

Post by weego »

nicoburns wrote: post #4

I believe that's Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook all looking to get involved in core Rust development (I think partially triggered by the Mozilla layoffs). If anybody was still harbouring doubts about Rust's future, now is the time to lay them aside.

My questions are about the domains rust ends up getting traction in, not so much whether it will.

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

#84

Post by gibolt »

smarx007 wrote: post #73
SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Friends of mine that are contract programmers have been ramping on Rust for the past 2-3 years claiming the number of requests for it has been increasing exponentially. I installed it two weeks ago and have been getting a feel for it. It's like if C++, C#, and npm had an offspring. I always hoped Java would make a comeback, but Rust is looking like the real deal.

> I always hoped Java would make a comeback In order to make a comeback, Java first needs to fall from the TOP 3 languages used by professional programmers in the world. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#most-popular-...

These insights are a snapshot, not a trend line. Java can be in rapid decline and still be at the top of the list. Changing acceleration, not position, is how you make a comeback.

Java is currently losing Android devs to Kotlin. That could cause a precipitous drop in direct usage in the coming years.

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

#85

Post by andrewmcwatters »

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…

To those taking the time to sell me on it, thank you. I really appreciate you all sharing why Rust is important. I value a lot of the mentioned benefits listed below, specifically wrt speed, but I'm not finding the trade-off there yet.

I work with codebases and projects where the expense of time is far too high to justify its usage, especially in existing designs where there is no meaningful way to extend the codebase with Rust. Believe it or not, but there really are a lot of us out there who just do not have memory (safety, ownership, or otherwise) problems with C or C++.

It sort of feels like the argument people make with static typing vs dynamic typing. It's just not a concern I have.

Perhaps with enough time and coercion I'll find a reason to use it.

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

#86

Post by astan »

Mixed feelings, on one hand, I'm so excited about the investment since I'm a big fan of Rust, on the other, I don't want it to be a clusterfuck like IETF and web standards development where companies like Google, Apple, Cloudflare, Mozilla get to dictate what is and isn't allowed on the web. I just hope the Rust community is able to stand up for itself and resist inclusion of unnecessary things against these big players with infinite resources.

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

#87

Post by adkadskhj »

piercebot wrote: post #67
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…

Yup - it drew me in as a Go programmer, entirely replacing my Go stack with Rust.

It offers me so many of the joys of Go with more power. Some negatives too of course, but a big boon for me in learning Rust was realizing i didn't always have to reach for the biggest tool. Sometimes a simple Clone or [A]rc was perfectly okay, especially when comparing it to Go - my benchmark.

Rust became as developer efficient for me as Go was, and then more so when i leveraged the huge surplus of code locality tools like Iterators and various functional patterns (.map, etc).

Plus, now i get to play with new toys like WASM without a GC or game engines! I miss almost nothing from Go and gained so much power when i want to reach for things. Most of which, like Iterators, are power with little to no cost.

I've been a Rust fanatic for a couple years now, and C/C++ were not even in my toolbox. I think Rust can hit a lot of sweet spots for a very very wide range of people, eg non-C/C++ domains. Which isn't an argument for its usage, but an explanation for its popularity.

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

#88

Post by layoutIfNeeded »

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…

Well, if you hadn’t noticed it’s mostly the same dozen of users upvoting and commenting every Rust-related article on HN.

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

#89

Post by joseluisq »

adwn wrote: post #75
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…

> [...] to throw away my time and play with toys. Rust is not a toy. It's possible that your prejudice stops you from seeing Rust's benefits. It's also possible that you're working in a niche where Rust's advantage compared to C or C++ isn't as great as for most other areas of software development. And that's okay, Rust isn't quite there yet. For some very small niches, it might never be. > [...] existing corpus of l…

That's the question, how many UBs and how long more?

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

#90

Post by Thaxll »

gibolt wrote: post #84
smarx007 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always hoped Java would make a comeback In order to make a comeback, Java first needs to fall from the TOP 3 languages used by professional programmers in the world. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#most-popular-...

These insights are a snapshot, not a trend line. Java can be in rapid decline and still be at the top of the list. Changing acceleration, not position, is how you make a comeback. Java is currently losing Android devs to Kotlin. That could cause a precipitous drop in direct usage in the coming years.

Java is nowhere close losing the #1/2 spot in programming language, it's just everywhere.
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