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How I went about learning Rust

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Re: How I went about learning Rust

#11

Post by pjmlp »

masklinn wrote: post #10
azeirah wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just thinking out loud, does go compile to WASM? I often see performance critical WASM snippets written in rust, but never in Go.

Go does compile to wasm, however because wasm is what it is it has to carry around the entire runtime. This is obviously a much bigger issue for delivery over the web than it is for shuffling binaries around, or even more so creating them locally: last I’d checked, the baseline (an empty main function) for a go wasm package is about 1.3M.

Hardly an issue when looking at the ads crap that get download in every "modern" site.

Re: How I went about learning Rust

#12

Post by prerok »

azeirah wrote: post #4
xEnOnn wrote: post #3

I have been thinking to myself whether I should pick up Go or Rust as a new language this year. Coming from a NodeJS background, Rust looks a tad more complicated but it looks cooler. There are also more job listings looking for Golang than Rust which makes me wonder if Golang might be a more rewarding investment? What would be a good use case of Rust than Golang cannot do given its extra complexity and potentially l…

Just thinking out loud, does go compile to WASM? I often see performance critical WASM snippets written in rust, but never in Go.

Sure it can: https://golangbot.com/webassembly-using-go/

Never tried it, though :)

Re: How I went about learning Rust

#13

Post by yakorevivan »

masklinn wrote: post #10
azeirah wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just thinking out loud, does go compile to WASM? I often see performance critical WASM snippets written in rust, but never in Go.

Go does compile to wasm, however because wasm is what it is it has to carry around the entire runtime. This is obviously a much bigger issue for delivery over the web than it is for shuffling binaries around, or even more so creating them locally: last I’d checked, the baseline (an empty main function) for a go wasm package is about 1.3M.

No post body was provided.

Re: How I went about learning Rust

#14

Post by cryptos »

xEnOnn wrote: post #3

I have been thinking to myself whether I should pick up Go or Rust as a new language this year. Coming from a NodeJS background, Rust looks a tad more complicated but it looks cooler. There are also more job listings looking for Golang than Rust which makes me wonder if Golang might be a more rewarding investment? What would be a good use case of Rust than Golang cannot do given its extra complexity and potentially l…

Rust is the more elegant and powerful language. Creating a new language and repeating the "billion dollar mistake" by including null (sailing under the brand name "nil" in Go) is just crazy. Error handling is another strange thing in Go. And generics have been only introduced recently, but there is hardly any support for libraries in it (now). While Go is definitely fast enough for most scenarios, it is not the best language for low level code like drivers or kernel development.

So, depending on your goals, I think Rust is the better language in general. But if your goal is to get something done fast, then Go would probably be better, since it doesn't require that much learning effort.

Re: How I went about learning Rust

#15

Post by mihaigalos »

xEnOnn wrote: post #3

I have been thinking to myself whether I should pick up Go or Rust as a new language this year. Coming from a NodeJS background, Rust looks a tad more complicated but it looks cooler. There are also more job listings looking for Golang than Rust which makes me wonder if Golang might be a more rewarding investment? What would be a good use case of Rust than Golang cannot do given its extra complexity and potentially l…

What are you looking for in the 2 languages? Here are some of my thoughts:

Golang

* Development speed: Golang wins by far. It's closer to Python in that regard, but with strong typing.

* Very nice multi-threading via Go routines and channels. Impressive semantics in simple syntax, requiring no synchronization mechanism on the user side.

* Large garbage collector penalty.

Rust

* Complete language with build system, crate, docs hosting.

* A lot more performance compared to Golang, on par with C++.

* Doctests (!).

* Slow to learn, slow to compile (probably not a deal-breaker, especially if you focus on microservices).

Concerning what would be a good usecase for Rust vs Golang, check this out:

https://discord.com/blog/why-discord-is-switching-from-go-to...

Re: How I went about learning Rust

#16

Post by tofuahdude »

indiv0 wrote: post #9
xEnOnn wrote: post #3

I have been thinking to myself whether I should pick up Go or Rust as a new language this year. Coming from a NodeJS background, Rust looks a tad more complicated but it looks cooler. There are also more job listings looking for Golang than Rust which makes me wonder if Golang might be a more rewarding investment? What would be a good use case of Rust than Golang cannot do given its extra complexity and potentially l…

As someone with extensive experience with Rust and a teensy bit of experience in Go I can tell you that I adore Rust for every use case I’ve tried it out for *except* for network services. It works ok for low level proxies and stuff like that; but Python/Flask-level easy it is not. Meanwhile my experience with Go has been the reverse. I’ve found it acceptable for most use cases, but for network services it really sta…

Could you please expand on this a bit? What are some example services that would be better written in go vs rust?

Re: How I went about learning Rust

#18

Post by tofuahdude »

mihaigalos wrote: post #15
xEnOnn wrote: post #3

I have been thinking to myself whether I should pick up Go or Rust as a new language this year. Coming from a NodeJS background, Rust looks a tad more complicated but it looks cooler. There are also more job listings looking for Golang than Rust which makes me wonder if Golang might be a more rewarding investment? What would be a good use case of Rust than Golang cannot do given its extra complexity and potentially l…

What are you looking for in the 2 languages? Here are some of my thoughts: Golang * Development speed: Golang wins by far. It's closer to Python in that regard, but with strong typing. * Very nice multi-threading via Go routines and channels. Impressive semantics in simple syntax, requiring no synchronization mechanism on the user side. * Large garbage collector penalty. Rust * Complete language with build system, cr…

How "large" is the garbage collector penalty? My understanding is that the Go GC is significantly more efficient than for example JS's mark/sweep approach. Apples to oranges for sure, but I am interested in better understanding how expensive the Go GC is vs Rust performance.

Re: How I went about learning Rust

#19

Post by davidatbu »

I just want to give a shout out to "Rust for Rustaceans".

I'm only three chapters in, and it's definitely the most enjoyable technical reading I've ever done because you learn so much, so quickly, and so easily. Steve Klabnik (co-author of "The Rust Programming Language") says it's the book to read after going through "The Rust Programming Language", and I couldn't agree more.

Re: How I went about learning Rust

#20

Post by masklinn »

mihaigalos wrote: post #15
xEnOnn wrote: post #3

I have been thinking to myself whether I should pick up Go or Rust as a new language this year. Coming from a NodeJS background, Rust looks a tad more complicated but it looks cooler. There are also more job listings looking for Golang than Rust which makes me wonder if Golang might be a more rewarding investment? What would be a good use case of Rust than Golang cannot do given its extra complexity and potentially l…

What are you looking for in the 2 languages? Here are some of my thoughts: Golang * Development speed: Golang wins by far. It's closer to Python in that regard, but with strong typing. * Very nice multi-threading via Go routines and channels. Impressive semantics in simple syntax, requiring no synchronization mechanism on the user side. * Large garbage collector penalty. Rust * Complete language with build system, cr…

> Very nice multi-threading via Go routines and channels. Impressive semantics in simple syntax, requiring no synchronization mechanism on the user side.

Except for all the times they are required and Go doesn’t tell you: https://eng.uber.com/data-race-patterns-in-go/

Go’s fundamental semantics are standard not-safe shared-memory multi threading. It provides an mpmc queue as a built-in out of necessity (since no generics originally, which would have made for an awkward situation), but really the only thing that’s notable about it is `select`, not `go` or `chan`.

In in some ways `go` is even a downgrade from other languages: you can’t get a handle on the goroutine and thus have to muck around with side-channels to even know that a subroutine has terminated let alone get its result.

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