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Why Rust is a great choice for startups

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Re: Why Rust is a great choice for startups

#221

Post by alephnan »

mwcampbell wrote: post #119
BigJ1211 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, you might attract talent that wants to use a specific language like Rust, but hasn't had the chance in their current professional environment.

It's also worth considering what will keep the founder(s) motivated to stay focused and do good work. Yes, using JavaScript and Electron might be the optimal rational business decision, and in theory we should be motivated solely by the problem we're trying to solve. But if the technical cofounder, who's currently the only programmer, then feels that they're creating something that nobody can really love, and they ge…

> what will keep the founder(s) motivated to stay focused and do good work.

I would not want to work with a cofounder who loses focuses when they don't get to use the trendy technology. They should be focused on delivering value.

Re: Why Rust is a great choice for startups

#222

Post by lenkite »

mwcampbell wrote: post #128
FpUser wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure what is so "un-tempered" in the original message (assuming it is not technically incorrect) and what makes Rust so special that criticism must be "tempered with gratitude".

Rust isn't special; what I said applies to any open-source project. But people have been pretty harsh about async in Rust lately, and IMO the message I was replying to makes the problem sound worse than it is.

Lol. just replace Rust with C++/Java. Does your opinion change ? Because no one cares about being gentle to C++/Java in the HN community.

Re: Why Rust is a great choice for startups

#223

Post by sn9 »

synergy20 wrote: post #200
Curious_Furious wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you need a large pool of talents Forgive me if I'm quoting you out of context but the article mentions receiving 4000 applicants over 8 weeks time. I've hired (primarily) for Java and DBA positions, and we would be absolutely thrilled if we got even 40 applicants.

"Many didn’t actually have Rust experience at all and that’s fine, they were just interested in the idea" -- to me, that's _not_ fine. startup needs to move fast to stay above the water, it's not the best place to learn 'coding in Rust 101' IMHO

In a pool of 4000, the fact that many didn't have experience with Rust doesn't mean that there weren't also many that did have experience.

You could just filter the CVs for Rust experience and then take the most impressive 10 or 100 to interview.

Re: Why Rust is a great choice for startups

#224

Post by lenkite »

olalonde wrote: post #157
pjmlp wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, F# with NuGet/Fake, Scala or Kotlin with Maven/Gradle, OCaml with OPAM. Those points are hardly Rust specific and apply to any compiled language with ML influences.

From the official "Maven in 5 Minutes" tutorial: mvn archetype:generate -DgroupId=com.mycompany.app -DartifactId=my-app -DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-quickstart -DarchetypeVersion=1.4 -DinteractiveMode=false From the official Rust lang book, Cargo section: cargo new my-project I guess it's a matter of taste...

Just use `gradle init`. Even that long maven project gen command can be simply hidden by a shell parameterized alias

Re: Why Rust is a great choice for startups

#225

Post by sophacles »

FpUser wrote: post #122
mwcampbell wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This constant refrain must be discouraging to the people who have worked so hard on async rust. Can we please restrict our criticism to specific problems, and temper it with gratitude for the amazing things that the Rust developers have already given us free of charge?

I am not sure what is so "un-tempered" in the original message (assuming it is not technically incorrect) and what makes Rust so special that criticism must be "tempered with gratitude".

Well, I have several production services. They are written in async rust. If they didn't work, or worked poorly, or even worked sorta good - you'd know it, the outages would be front page news in the tech press and maybe even on "the news".

I didn't have to do anything special to make them work well, just out of the box tokio and a small bit of learning how to do stuff that's weird to do in most any language (e.g. netlink, bpf maps and so on).

I don't know what the definition of "doesn't really work" is, but it seems technically incorrect given how my services run for months at a time between restarts (which I consider a symptom of working).

Re: Why Rust is a great choice for startups

#226

Post by lenkite »

hellokittycity wrote: post #16
eventhorizonpl wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that big issue https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-70-percent-of-all-se...

This is why we need a professional organization to hold software developers accountable to the same standard as other fields of engineering.

Well, software developers will need 2/3 years of legal training also then.

Re: Why Rust is a great choice for startups

#227

Post by amelius »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #205
amelius wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really puzzles me why smart people want to spend their time satisfying the borrow checker rather than inventing new and useful things.

I don't remember the 'satisfying the borrow checker' phase lasting more than a few weeks. Once you internalize the rules the borrow checker gets out of your way and it's more of a sanity check. I think part of the issue is that it wasn't very well explained in the book at the time I started learning rust. This might have improved since.

The entire way of coding in Rust revolves around satisfying the borrow checker. At some point it may become second nature, but you are still jumping through Rust's hoops, which will make your code full of compromises that would otherwise not exist.

Re: Why Rust is a great choice for startups

#228

Post by clpm4j »

staticassertion wrote: post #153
m_a_g wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can find great examples of Rust async programming being "a disaster and a mess". You still can consider it is working just fine, but I disagree.

I don't really need to find those examples, I've written most of my company's product in Rust using async, for years, and it's never once been an issue. That's 100s of thousands of lines of rust written and 0 async issues.

Totally valid, but you could also say the same thing about C and C++, i.e. you can wield your tool with mastery, then that's awesome. But I think the average startup would likely struggle needlessly when they really just need to ship products that people want/need to use. Rust is likely not the smartest choice for the average startup.

Re: Why Rust is a great choice for startups

#229

Post by staticassertion »

hu3 wrote: post #207
staticassertion wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's why I quoted one specific part and responded to that specific part.

No you included the GC part too: > FYI: If you're primarily IO-heavy, the GC pauses aren't going to be a big deal. To further my point: .NET and Java are amazing when it comes to performance for most cases. You get a mature ecosystem, large developer pool, fast runtime and all the comfort that GC offers. I'd argue that choosing Rust for most startups is outright irresponsible.

Yeah fair, in my mind I was just responding to the bit about node, but whatever.

> I'd argue that choosing Rust for most startups is outright irresponsible.

I feel the opposite and I run a startup using Rust. If I could go back I'd use Rust in more places, not fewer.

Re: Why Rust is a great choice for startups

#230

Post by staticassertion »

clpm4j wrote: post #228
staticassertion wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really need to find those examples, I've written most of my company's product in Rust using async, for years, and it's never once been an issue. That's 100s of thousands of lines of rust written and 0 async issues.

Totally valid, but you could also say the same thing about C and C++, i.e. you can wield your tool with mastery, then that's awesome. But I think the average startup would likely struggle needlessly when they really just need to ship products that people want/need to use. Rust is likely not the smartest choice for the average startup.

Only one person at the company had previous professional experience with Rust. The majority had 0 experience with it at all. We've had no trouble and it's actually been our most productive language - we're moving away from Python and Typescript where possible.
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