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Rust – A hard decision pays off

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271–280 of 386 posts

Re: Rust – A hard decision pays off

#271

> Dev velocity, which was supposed to be the claim to fame of Python, improved dramatically with Rust. I don't doubt this in the least. I've been a professional Python developer for 15 years, and I can't believe Python ever had the reputation for "high dev velocity" beyond toy examples. In every real world code base I've worked in, Python has been a strict liability and the promise that you can "just rewrite the slow…

Started a small project with rust and serde(toml config). Having static checking of config an its parsing felt really good.

We started just writing configs in typescript which has the benefit of static checking in your editor with suggestions/underlines. Could likely do the same in rust.

Re: Rust – A hard decision pays off

#272

> Dev velocity, which was supposed to be the claim to fame of Python, improved dramatically with Rust. I don't doubt this in the least. I've been a professional Python developer for 15 years, and I can't believe Python ever had the reputation for "high dev velocity" beyond toy examples. In every real world code base I've worked in, Python has been a strict liability and the promise that you can "just rewrite the slow…

I said this for years... no type checking by the compiler? Then you are the compiler.

Re: Rust – A hard decision pays off

#273
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but I think people make too big a deal about iterators. The simple for loops that they’re fit to replace aren’t that hard to read or write, so they aren’t causing real problems, and on the more complex end you’re writing imperative stuff anyway. Iterators certainly aren’t a bad thing, but they’re not the game changer that Go-critics made them out to be in all of the Rust-vs-Go debates.

I disagree. If I can avoid an index variable, I’m going to have less bugs since I won’t have to index.

> If I can avoid an index variable, I’m going to have less bugs since I won’t have to index.

Not only that. In safe Rust vector indexes are always bound-checked that slows execution a little bit. Iterators over a vector, on the other hand, do not suffer from bound-check overhead.

Re: Rust – A hard decision pays off

#274

> Dev velocity, which was supposed to be the claim to fame of Python, improved dramatically with Rust. I don't doubt this in the least. I've been a professional Python developer for 15 years, and I can't believe Python ever had the reputation for "high dev velocity" beyond toy examples. In every real world code base I've worked in, Python has been a strict liability and the promise that you can "just rewrite the slow…

Yes re: Python. Story -- I was a very early adopter of Python, back in the mid-90s. When other people wrote their CGI scripts in Perl, I always reached for Python. The first paid gig I ever had was a CGI script ("resume builder") I wrote in Python in 1996. But almost nobody was using it back then, and I'd get quizzical stares from people in job interviews etc. when it came up. So for many years back then I really rea…

> They only give you the illusion of fast prototyping. You just shift your time to fixing type and binding errors later in your dev cycle.

That is the perfect way to describe it! And sometimes you’re out of the dev cycle and into production if your test suite didn’t hit all cases.

Re: Rust – A hard decision pays off

#275
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every language you can think of, and many you can't, are in use somewhere at every large company. That is no distinction at all. So, no bet. If it gets into the Linux kernel in any capacity, obviously it will still be in there as long as anybody still uses whatever it does. That, also, is no distinction at all. So, no bet. I am not expressing opinions. I am expressing observations, and expectations that seem to follo…

You say this language will fail because most languages fail. Ok, make a falsifiable statement and I'll take a bet on that.

You seem very confused. I have not, in fact, said this language will fail.

Bets are not interesting. I would like for Rust not to fail, but do not see the things happening that would prevent it.

Re: Rust – A hard decision pays off

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people seem to believe that dynamically typed languages make development easier, because you don't have to worry about writing type annotations or going through the extra steps to fix compile-time errors. This is arguably true for small scripts, but for anything non-trivial I find that static typing means I can be more productive, because type errors are caught straight away (rather than potentially in produ…

> I find that static typing means I can be more productive, because type errors are caught straight away I agree completely. I feel like there’s a pretty common arc among programmers: 1. learn to program using verbose statically typed languages 2. discover fun dynamically typed languages, eschew statically typed languages 3. discover dynamically typed languages are a shitshow for large real-world projects 4. re-disco…

Except keep in mind that Rust adds more constraints than your typical statically typed language.

It is still more fun and efficient to program in a language that is garbage collected and statically typed.

Re: Rust – A hard decision pays off

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I think a hype like this comes along once or twice in a career. Java was every bit as revolutionary in its day and had Sun Microsystems (they were a Big Deal) pouring every spare dollar into fluff pieces about it and it still never achieved a true Jehovah’s Witness vibe.

Well, Java had at least one aspect of a religion: a purity test. Remember "100% Pure Java" from the late 90s?

100% Pure Java is because Java is actually about four things. One of those things is a Virtual Machine, which means you don't give a shit that the implementer has never seen an ARM CPU, because you've got the Java VM, and so their code works fine on your ARM CPU.

But if their "Java" software is actually 10% i686 Machine Code then that won't run on your ARM CPU, you will need to undertake an expensive port or move to Intel. So hence 100% Pure Java == Write Once / Run Anywhere actually delivered.

You can argue that Rust is more than one thing, but certainly not to same extent. Rust's culture is crucial to its "A language empowering everyone..." slogan, but it's not really separate from the programming language, in the way that the Java Virtual Machine doesn't need the Java programming language or the Java security model (now obsolete) or the Java browser plugin (remember that?) and so on.

Re: Rust – A hard decision pays off

#279
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Most startups that YC has funded that became successful (Series B or higher) were written in Python or Ruby. Now you can say that this is a tradeoff for post Series B, and for that I don't know. I've never worked on a massive Python mono-repo for a company that size. But I know what I've done in Python and, yes, it includes performance optimization in Numpy / Scipy / Cython, and other than Ruby, no other…

> I disagree. > Most startups that YC has funded that became successful (Series B or higher) were written in Python or Ruby. It depends on what your goal is. If you want to get rich off of VC money, Python and Ruby might be a good fit. If you, on the other hand, want to write good, performant, maintenable and (relatively) bug-free software, then there are better choices.

If you, on the other hand, want to write good, performant, maintenable and (relatively) bug-free software, then there are better choices.

You can do that part when the money comes in.

Re: Rust – A hard decision pays off

#280

> Dev velocity, which was supposed to be the claim to fame of Python, improved dramatically with Rust. I don't doubt this in the least. I've been a professional Python developer for 15 years, and I can't believe Python ever had the reputation for "high dev velocity" beyond toy examples. In every real world code base I've worked in, Python has been a strict liability and the promise that you can "just rewrite the slow…

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