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How I went about learning Rust

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Re: How I went about learning Rust

#71

Post by atoav »

thejosh wrote: post #43

I tried to pick up Rust a few years ago, but there were too many sharp edges. I thought it was a nice language, but was too early for actual use. I played with some libraries (Apache Arrow, etc) and it was nice. About 2 months ago I wanted to use Arrow within Elixir, which required me to start using Rust again (Elixir uses Rustler to safely convert from Rust Elixir without theoretically crashing the beam). I am amaze…

I mean it depends. Many of aspects of Rust that are perceived as sharp edges are in fact the programmer bringing in their preferences and paradigms from other languages and trying to program that way in Rust.

I was one of those and tried to do OOP in Rust. It was a pain. At some point I gave up and was like: "Okay Rust, I do it your way, I just want this to work". And it worked flawlessly and easy. I literally had to overcome my ideas of beauty in code to realize how Rust is meant to be programmed in (more data oriented, less object oriented).

This was a really good lesson for me, as I had to question similar aesthetically motivated decisions I made in other languages in the past.

Re: How I went about learning Rust

#72

Post by bbojan »

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…

One drawback of Go (in my opinion) is that it has a runtime. So it's very difficult (impossible) to use it with other languages that also have a runtime. So if you learn Go, you'll never be able to use it to interoperate with e.g. your Python program to speed it up.

With Rust, you could use it to replace the most time critical parts of your high-level program piece by piece. The learning curve is then much easier, and adoption can be gradual.

Re: How I went about learning Rust

#73

Post by olalonde »

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…

I had the same reflexion about 2 years ago. Realistically, pretty much any program written in NodeJS can be ported to Go and vice versa. But not every Rust program can be ported to NodeJS/Go. It opens up a new class of software that is not typically available to NodeJS/Go developers (e.g. systems programming, embedded, writing libraries for other languages, etc.).

So I went with Rust and am very happy with the decision. Despite being a systems programming language, it feels surprisingly like a high-level language and I now default to programming stuff in Rust unless there's a strong reason to use NodeJS.

PS: That said, an often understated benefit of Go is that the community and job opportunities are massive in comparison to Rust (for now, at least).

Re: How I went about learning Rust

#74

Post by [deleted] »

TrackerFF wrote: post #52

A bit unrelated: Maybe I'm wrong, but I get the impression that the people who learn Rust, tend to be quite experienced programmers. I have yet to see complete beginners document their journey, starting with Rust. I've seen lots of people do that with C/C++, Java, and the other usual suspects - but Rust still seems like a language for at least intermediate programmers.

[deleted]

Re: How I went about learning Rust

#75

Post by bbojan »

Jyaif wrote: post #60
mihaigalos wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> slow to compile In my experience it's the slowest language to compile ever , and the binaries generated are gargantuan. I was super excited to learn Rust, but that excitement is now 100% gone.

I wonder what other languages you have experience with. C++ is obviously not one of them.

Re: How I went about learning Rust

#76

Post by zozbot234 »

atoav wrote: post #71
thejosh wrote: post #43

I tried to pick up Rust a few years ago, but there were too many sharp edges. I thought it was a nice language, but was too early for actual use. I played with some libraries (Apache Arrow, etc) and it was nice. About 2 months ago I wanted to use Arrow within Elixir, which required me to start using Rust again (Elixir uses Rustler to safely convert from Rust Elixir without theoretically crashing the beam). I am amaze…

I mean it depends . Many of aspects of Rust that are perceived as sharp edges are in fact the programmer bringing in their preferences and paradigms from other languages and trying to program that way in Rust. I was one of those and tried to do OOP in Rust. It was a pain. At some point I gave up and was like: "Okay Rust, I do it your way, I just want this to work". And it worked flawlessly and easy. I literally had t…

Rust actually supports most OOP features, with the main exception of implementation inheritance. And implementation inheritance is a nasty footgun in large-scale software systems (search around for: "fragile base class problem"), in a way that just doesn't apply to simple composition and pure interfaces (traits). So it's hard to fault Rust for including the latter and not the former.

Re: How I went about learning Rust

#77

Post by hurril »

atoav wrote: post #71
thejosh wrote: post #43

I tried to pick up Rust a few years ago, but there were too many sharp edges. I thought it was a nice language, but was too early for actual use. I played with some libraries (Apache Arrow, etc) and it was nice. About 2 months ago I wanted to use Arrow within Elixir, which required me to start using Rust again (Elixir uses Rustler to safely convert from Rust Elixir without theoretically crashing the beam). I am amaze…

I mean it depends . Many of aspects of Rust that are perceived as sharp edges are in fact the programmer bringing in their preferences and paradigms from other languages and trying to program that way in Rust. I was one of those and tried to do OOP in Rust. It was a pain. At some point I gave up and was like: "Okay Rust, I do it your way, I just want this to work". And it worked flawlessly and easy. I literally had t…

This sounds to me like the journey into functional programming. I've experienced the same thing myself.

Re: How I went about learning Rust

#78

Post by smt88 »

kybernetikos wrote: post #40
smt88 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, it changes the title so much that it's not correct English anymore.

It could suggest a travelling rust learner in the same way that swordsmen in feudal Japan used to perfect their art by travelling around.

Ha! That's funny. I hadn't thought of that.

I may be mistaken, but I think to be correct in that context, it would need a comma:

"I went about, learning Rust"

Re: How I went about learning Rust

#79

Post by mmarq »

cryptos wrote: post #14
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…

> Creating a new language and repeating the "billion dollar mistake" by including null (sailing under the brand name "nil" in Go) is just crazy.

You forgot pointers used to represent nullables.

Re: How I went about learning Rust

#80

Post by srer »

Animats wrote: post #39
indiv0 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes. Rust is for what you'd otherwise have to write in C++. It's overkill for web services. You have to obsess over who owns what. The compiler will catch memory safety errors, but you still have to resolve them. It's quite possible to paint yourself into a corner and have to go back and redesign something. On the other hand, if you really need to coordinate many CPUs in a complicated way, Rust has decent facilities…

> The language has memory-safe concurrency (except for maps, which is weird)...

My understanding is you should operate the other way around. Things aren't safe for concurrent mutation unless it's explicitly documented as safe.

> So you can have parallelism without worrying too much about race conditions or leaks.

You might not worry, but I find these the two easiest classes of Go bug to find when entering new codebases ;).

Still, I agree Go is easier to get a web service up and running with.

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