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Why Rust?

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Re: Why Rust?

#281

Post by rvz »

spoiler wrote: post #66
rvz wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are a few prominent cryptographers in the 'cryptocurrency' scene with 'deep knowledge': Matthew Green from John Hopkins University [0] Zhenfei Zhang of Ethereum, Mina, Algorand blockchains who co-created the NIST post-quantum cryptography standard for digital signatures called Falcon [1] Nadim Kobeissi creator of cryptocat now created Capsule Social [2] Silvio Micali, Turing Award Winner for his work on Zero-Kno…

A lot of crypto nerds swarmed to this field because the tech is undeniably fun, and the whole space is rather interesting and is fun to play in. Kinda like it's more fun writing a multiplayer game than a singleplayer game? I don't think most of these people are into cryptocurrencies specifically.

> I don't think most of these people are into cryptocurrencies specifically.

They are? Especially the creator of Algorand (a cryptocurrency) Silvio Micali. In his CV [0]

> "Scientific Interests, Cryptocurrencies, Blockchains"

At the bottom of his CV:

> "Technology Transfer: Algorand, Founder and Inventor of the Core Technology"

If that is not 'into' cryptocurrencies, then I don't know what is.

[0] http://people.csail.mit.edu/silvio/CV.pdf

Re: Why Rust?

#282

Post by cyber_kinetist »

insanitybit wrote: post #186
cyber_kinetist wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But most of the bugs I often face and seem to struggle with are with dynamic lifetimes (in graphics / simulation / gamedev). So even as a relatively low-level systems dev I don’t really find Rust’s borrow checker that useful.

I think there are cases where borrow checking is difficult for a domain, but without a lot more detail it's hard to say. My understanding is that graphics/gamedev is one of those cases and if you aren't willing to use ECS you may have problems.

I am personally using generational indices for a lot of my stuff, no smart pointers. Many ECS implementations also seem to use this technique.

But if you're stuck with legacy code in $WORK you are stuck with raw/smart pointers and these really have lots of issues.

Re: Why Rust?

#283

Post by cyber_kinetist »

nicoburns wrote: post #234
cyber_kinetist wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But most of the bugs I often face and seem to struggle with are with dynamic lifetimes (in graphics / simulation / gamedev). So even as a relatively low-level systems dev I don’t really find Rust’s borrow checker that useful.

I guess the benefit of Rust in this case is that you will get an index out of bounds error rather than Undefined Behaviour.

You can also check index out of bounds in C++ code, and you actually have more freedom to control it in C++. In Rust bounds checks are required unless you use unsafe, in C++ you can turn it on/off freely depending on your usecase (for example, when you are in debug mode vs. deploying your code).

Re: Why Rust?

#284

Post by toyg »

5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #214
maeln wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People doing frontend dev don't want to bother with slow compile time Honestly, with my previous experience as a frontend web, compile time for frontend is starting to become as bad as a standard compiled language. When you start to have a whole framework, many (many!) dependencies (you know, the kind that make just deleting the node_modules directory slow) and webpack with some plugins for CSS, es-lint and all tha…

It's pretty fast with modern tooling. Try vite or swc if you have the time and inclination. vite builds one of my large $DAYJOB projects in ~45 seconds (which is insane compared to how webpack performed). If you don't need vite's extensibility, you can go with 'pure' esbuild and slim down transpilation + minification + bundling to only a few seconds. https://vitejs.dev https://github.com/swc-project/swc https://githu…

When JS was born, "building" was F5 in a browser. 45 seconds is an eternity in comparison.

Re: Why Rust?

#285

Post by FromTheSteppe »

dgan wrote: post #117

I don't understand why everyone seems to ignore Ada? Granted I am completely new to it, but from what I see it is years ahead of Rust in terms of safety (it can prove correctness!! Rust is only heading into that direction). Yes syntax is verbose, but I dare to believe there must be another blocker than just syntax?

Because Ada tooling is bad. Try getting gnat on macOS aarch64 and compile emacs' ada mode extension. You'd never touch anything Ada again.

Re: Why Rust?

#286

Post by Veliladon »

0rzech wrote: post #242
Veliladon wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it's the borrow checker and lack of shared mutable states stopping me from doing dumb things. Add on things like cargo build manager and crates and it's like a delicious roast dinner smothered in gravy. I've written in Ada95 back in college and it was great but I'm like a duck in water with Rust.

> For me it's the borrow checker and lack of shared mutable states stopping me from doing dumb things. AFAIK, the newest SPARK got borrow checking capability. Also, Ada has excellent design by contract capabilities [1] and constrained subtypes [2]. > Add on things like cargo build manager and crates and it's like a delicious roast dinner smothered in gravy. Ada has now Alire [3] for that. > I've written in Ada95 back…

Oh yeah when I first started coding in Rust and saw its enum type system the first thing that came to my mind was "this is cool but they also need range types like Ada".

Re: Why Rust?

#287

Post by ttfkam »

fuckstick wrote: post #105
ttfkam wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously not fast enough for Google since they literally invented a new programming language (Go) to address the compile time and runtime limitations of Java.

Of all the criticisms I’ve heard hurled at Java, compile time isn’t one of them. Have you actually used any of these things you comment on?

I used to work for Google and have yet to see Java compile faster than Go.

Re: Why Rust?

#288

Post by [deleted] »

RestlessMind wrote: post #264
api wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s cryptocurrency in its original use case: virtual money. This was all technically possible in 2009. What I was getting at was… what’s new? Billions and billions have been poured into all kinds of app development and R&D in this space and all we have is still what we had when Bitcoin launched. What are all these people in crypto building? Where is it? Where can I use it? Imagine if 25 years after the dot com era…

> what’s new? Increased social and political acceptance of Bitcoin as virtual money? That is a big deal. > ...all we have is still what we had when Bitcoin launched. False. In 2009, a very very small minority took it seriously. Now you have Blackrocks of the world getting in that business and SEC approving a Bitcoin ETF. So after Billions and billions of investment, now Crypto is a "serious business". Which is exactl…

[deleted]

Re: Why Rust?

#289

Post by api »

soundnote wrote: post #275
api wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are crypto companies doing that I should care about? Give me something I could go check out and use that is: (1) Not speculation, gambling, or some variation thereof. (2) Useful for something other than crypto itself. (3) Actually works and can be used today. (4) Continues to make sense even in a crypto bear market. (In other words: I will still buy milk even if the US dollar is falling because the point is the…

Arguably Brave.

Does anyone actually use BAT or just the Brave browser? I would consider paying for a privacy-first browser in regular money, but have no interest in the BAT thing which seems entirely shoehorned in.

Re: Why Rust?

#290

Post by soundnote »

api wrote: post #289
soundnote wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably Brave.

Does anyone actually use BAT or just the Brave browser? I would consider paying for a privacy-first browser in regular money, but have no interest in the BAT thing which seems entirely shoehorned in.

According to Eich, something like 20% of their userbase or so. I personally have no interest in it, but don't mind their ad model. The company does sell real money services - perhaps most notably in the "pay for the browser" type category, they offer a paid, ad-free version of Brave Search.
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