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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

#191

Post by toyg »

xiphias2 wrote: post #135
toyg wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically, three of those 5 points are non-issues for C/C++ devs. The last is only relevant for certain types of workload. So you’re left with one real killer-feature of Rust: the safety. It’s a massive feature that cascades very well into pretty much anything you do... but it’s also one feature really - the benefits of which might not be particularly relevant on large established projects who have probably addre…

> the benefits of which might not be particularly relevant on large established projects who have probably addressed that problem a long time ago It's quite the opposite: the larger a C/C++ project gets, the more problem you are starting to have with safety. Securing and modifying millions of lines of C/C++ code (especially if it's multi-threaded) is a nightmare, and actually impossible, where people are afraid to re…

But if you can’t have a Big Rewrite, you’re looking at meshing Rust and C/C++ - a suboptimal situation for any language, regardless of ease of technical integration, because of the organizational overhead (now you need to hire developers proficient in both C and Rust, rather than just one of them, and have two sets of standards, two sets of onboarding procedures, etc).

To clarify, I’m not arguing that Rust is bad or inferior (to the contrary!), just that the incentives for established projects to move on from C/C++, from a strategic perspective, might not look that massive if they’re only gaining in safety.

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

#192

Post by toyg »

cogman10 wrote: post #145
toyg wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically, three of those 5 points are non-issues for C/C++ devs. The last is only relevant for certain types of workload. So you’re left with one real killer-feature of Rust: the safety. It’s a massive feature that cascades very well into pretty much anything you do... but it’s also one feature really - the benefits of which might not be particularly relevant on large established projects who have probably addre…

I think the more interesting cost benefit isn't moving from C++ to rust. Rather it is moving from Java or Python or Ruby or Perl to Rust. You'd pretty much never make the move from Java -> C++ because of the lack of safety. But you may want to do it because of the other non-safety features. That is where Rust is interesting and competitive. It's the performance and memory footprint of C++ with the memory safety of Ja…

Absolutely, but the parent poster referred to C/C++, which is why I mentioned it.

From other languages it’s definitely a stronger proposition in many respects.

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

#193

Post by andrewmcwatters »

proverbialbunny wrote: post #171
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying really hard to argue facts or even talking about performance numbers or anything of the sort. There are people who really, really love Rust, and I'd love to better understand how some developers arrived at their opinions of the software. If there's a killer reason outside of memory safety and ownership, like compiler speed or something, I'd love to hear more about it from first hand accounts rather tha…

You're side stepping what I said. The point is people will downvote false facts, but rarely downvote opinions that do not have an underpinning of false facts. Furthermore, you're lying. You've gotten tons of responses here as to why some people use Rust or like Rust, yet you then continue to spout that you want what you've already have gotten.

I see what you're saying now.

Separately from that, I haven't ignored any of them, and I'm replying to quite a few of them to understand more.

I don't know what vested interest you have in saying I'm lying.

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

#194

Post by spamizbad »

SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #15
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.

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 feel like Java needs to become a lot less popular first before it can have a comeback.

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

#195

Post by andrewmcwatters »

steveklabnik wrote: post #172
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to use Rust without much necessary usage of generics?

Defining your own? Absolutely. Using them at all? Basically impossible. The standard (and core) library is entirely built around it.

Perhaps Rust can be the language where I force myself to get used to them. In C++ there are stilly plenty of alternatives to not having to use templates. The reason I ask is I've preferred not to use them because I find them slightly more demanding to read.

I think that's just a personal bias I need to get over.

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

#196

Post by throwaway894345 »

johnnycerberus wrote: post #148
throwaway894345 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment seems to assume that your use case “big data engineer” is the only use case or the only Java use case and that the only context in which Rust can grow is to rewrite the existing tools that you use today (as opposed to greenfield projects like firecracker or bottle rocket). Your edit also writes Rust off as “idealistic” and not “pragmatic” without support, which is very far from the impression I have (bas…

Firecracker and Bottlerocket are fine pieces of engineering. If Rust wants to get a share of the pie when it comes to data engineering, then it needs to have at least a killer app with an ecosystem around it. We can talk all day and all night for why some languages are more successful than others but it seems like ecosystems are giving them a boost. Hopefully, Rust will be the language for microVMs and kernel-level m…

I generally agree--languages do better when they become the language of a particular ecosystem and that ecosystem becomes relevant. Go had this with containers and network software a bit more broadly.

That said, I don't think anyone was suggesting Rust would displace Java. The OP was pretty clear IMO that his firm had experienced exponential growth in interest in Rust skills while he had been hoping that interest in Java would grow instead. This doesn't mean that Rust will replace Java for data engineering or any other domain in particular.

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

#197

Post by jayd16 »

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…

>Am I just not "with it?"

>all in the name of whatever it is that Rust delivers on

If you haven't bothered to groc the purported benefits and you have not decided to reject them on their own merits then yeah, I'd say you're just being a grump.

Feel free to not like Rust but your complaints don't show a lot of effort in trying to understand it.

As far as what you lose when you try new languages, you really shouldn't worry so much. A vast majority of your skills as a programmer are portable.

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

#198

Post by basicneo »

renewiltord wrote: post #114
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.

In a post about Rust adoption, it seems on topic in a threaded forum that commonly discusses pros and cons to discuss pros and cons.

This is an opportunity to educate/advocate. Someone who wants to do that might link to a good article, rather than just attempt to shut down the discussion.

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

#199

Post by eikenberry »

free_rms wrote: post #49
wbl wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What clusterfuck? The current version module system works if people can maintain compat. If not, nothing will save you.

It took them like a decade to get there though, all the while telling the entire non-Google world that they must be doing something wrong if they want versioning for their dependencies.

The problem was that there were no dependency solutions at the time that really nailed it. Most systems used something similar to Ruby's Bundler system, which was terrible to work with. Personally I like that the Go team is patient and takes the long view when adding features to the core tool set and language.

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

#200

Post by manishsharan »

SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #15
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.

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 don't love Java like I love Clojure but I think Java may stage a comeback with GraalVM: it has cut down startup times to almost match with native C/C++ . I am taking all my java projects meant to run on AWS Lambda and am running it through GraalVM to cut startups time and also memory size.
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