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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

#111

Post by proverbialbunny »

jpgvm wrote: post #48
geofft wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you need to rewrite them? Rust can call C++ code, just like Java and Python can. (I note you list Python libraries like Tensorflow and PyTorch as C++, which is accurate because they're written in C++, but they're certainly heavily used from a non-C++ language.)

Rust definitely makes sense anywhere you are currently using C/C++ or Python/Ruby. Java is somewhat of a special case though, especially the Big Data ecosystem. Much of the fastest and most important Java tools are written in pure Java (or other JVM language) and as such can't be called from Rust in a reasonable way. Writing Big Data code in Rust is certainly possible from a performance perspective but is an uphill b…

You've got it backwards. Rust is lower level than Java, so Java would be calling Rust, not the other way around.

Rust isn't aiming to displace Java. They're two different levels of abstraction. It's the same with Python. Rust isn't aiming to displace Python just as Java isn't aiming to displace Python either.

Rust one day could displace C++, but the odds are low, because in response to Rust C++ has stepped up its game and has changed as a language drastically. Most modern C++ features are concepts from Rust.

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

#112

Post by woah »

johnnycerberus wrote: post #27
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.

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…

Being as experienced as you are, couldn't you just learn Rust like any other language if you need it in your work (or just to try it out). Your post has a weird negative vibe, like it would cost you greatly to try it.

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

#113

Post by mjasay »

ufmace wrote: post #43

If they really want to help, the most obvious first step would seem to be to formally adopt and throw some full-time resources at the Rusoto AWS library set for Rust. It's pretty usable right now, but would certainly benefit from the level of testing, helper methods, and language-specific additions that the officially supported AWS libs have.

It's a good call out, and one that we're actively engaged with. Matthew has done fantastic work on Rusoto and we'd like to be helpful there. Stay tuned.

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

#114

Post by renewiltord »

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…

There's lots of articles for the advantages of Rust. Consider just searching for some of them on Google since they will, in general, be written in a more considered fashion than a response to your comment.

In an effort to be transparent, I will downvote your comment because I like novelty and interesting new things, not the nth version of a BSD is dead or Vim v Emacs discussion, which is what you're spawning.

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

#115

Post by andrewmcwatters »

k__ wrote: post #105
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…

The Rust community alone is so much better than anything I've seen in my 15 year programming career. The communities of statically typed programming languages were especially elitist and gatekeeping. The Rust community is welcoming.

I've basically had nothing but downvotes from the Rust community because any time I point something out about my thoughts on the language, I'm wrong and can't have those thoughts.

Some one here in a separate thread said, "I don't understand your hate," and I'm like, what hate? It's a programming language. I don't hate it, I just don't yet find a reason to use it, but maybe I'm missing something really big.

It's not really welcoming at all in my opinion. It carries all of the familiar facets of being a hyped product that people love, and if you question it you're not only wrong, you should be torn down because of your opinion.

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

#116

Post by sjtindell »

johnnycerberus wrote: post #27
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.

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…

A good point and a long list of tools. But imo this is not the industry to say “good luck rewriting X” in. It is inevitable someone will come along to rewrite or write a new and improved tool for everything on that list. And it might be in Rust.

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

#117

Post by woah »

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…

There's this odd genre of comment where people sound personally threatened by a language. Why?

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

#118

Post by andrewmcwatters »

gpm wrote: post #110
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Code from Servo is in every single copy of Firefox, so it's pretty popular as code goes. This is akin to saying the DWM is in every copy of Windows so it's the most popular graphical compositor of all time.

It really isn't. The entire purpose of servo was to be a vehicle for r&d with the eventual goal of merging code back to firefox. It succeeded. No one used it because that really wasn't the point.

I think you're right in that that was the original sell, but it's not how they sell it today.

"Servo’s mission is to provide an independent, modular, embeddable web engine, which allows developers to deliver content and applications using web standards."

So maybe they're just not there yet?

But in my opinion, if you create popular software and no one uses it, it's not popular from its adoption, it's popular for some other reason. I can't point to any one using Servo and figure out how they use it, because I don't know of any companies or products actually using it besides Mozilla.

And I embed web tech, so I've spent a lot of time in that particular field. I just don't see it actually being used outside of Mozilla projects, like it was originally conceptually sold.

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

#119

Post by skybrian »

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.

It can go the other way. Apple started LLVM but can they be considered to own it anymore?

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

#120

Post by mjasay »

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.

To be very clear, it's not Amazon's language to take. We are contributing (and I think you'll see us increase our contributions), but we are one of many contributors.

And, I should add, the real contributors are the engineers who do the code. AWS is committing credits/cash/other, but when it comes to the engineering, we are hiring committers so that they have time/resources to continue to do so. But it's those engineers (and engineers from other companies) who are doing the work.

I'm very, very grateful that Facebook and others have also been hiring Rust committers. It's better as a community, not as one company's programming language, even a great company/org like Mozilla.

So, no, don't worry about AWS taking over Rust. We couldn't and don't want to. Rust has done so, so much right as a community-led project: welcoming, inclusive, kind. We hope to contribute to that, not commandeer anything.

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