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Ask HN: Is Rust worth investing in as a reliable C-alt given its recent saga?

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Re: Ask HN: Is Rust worth investing in as a reliable C-alt given its recent saga?

#21

Post by bennettnate5 »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #10
bjourne wrote: post #7

Community drama is a terrible way to evaluate a language.

A decent metric for community maturity though. That absolutely should be a factor in deciding on a language. I'm having a real hard time seeing this unfold among the greybeards that call the shots in Java or C++.

Granted, the reason for that could be that through the years the greybeards that call the shots have weeded out (whether unintentionally or intentionally) any voices that are incompatible with their way of doing things. I agree that it does indicate the maturity of the community, but that could be because the community's values become more homogenous.

Re: Ask HN: Is Rust worth investing in as a reliable C-alt given its recent saga?

#23

Post by throwaway2037 »

jareds wrote: post #4
daviddever23box wrote: post #2

IMHO, one should make one's language choices based on utility and NOT solely on metacharacteristics such as quality of governance, DEI efforts, or nation of origin. None of these things matter when the program is run, if the process and end result do not solve the problem(s) at hand. Thorough feature discussion, appropriate licensing, and accessibility of source code for risk evaluation are metacharacteristics that a…

I was not aware that there are any recent issues with the Rust community since I don't use Rust. while technical characteristics of a language are important the ability of a community to continue supporting the language for the long term is also important. Go has Google backing it, Java has Oracle backing it, etc. Is there enough corporate use of Rust that if the current Rust community falls apart someone will create…

    I was not aware that there are any recent issues with the Rust community
Maybe this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36101501 -> "Why I Left Rust" -> https://www.jntrnr.com/why-i-left-rust/

And this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36105637

And this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36106942

Re: Ask HN: Is Rust worth investing in as a reliable C-alt given its recent saga?

#24

Post by cmrdporcupine »

To me, it looks like Rust is suffering from "cool kids syndrome." It's hip right now, and all the cool kids are piling in, or some of the people who have been using it for a while are hoping to cash in social capital.

I don't understand this way of using technology or being in this profession; self promotion and dialogue through twitter, blog posting all over the place, conferences, panels, books, speaking tours, ego & self promotion all built around particular tools.

In the end these are tools for writing software and we get paid. Is Rust a better tool that some others? Yes, and it's what I'm working with these days. But it's not a lifestyle, and it should not be a culture/subculture. Other professions don't generally talk this way about their tools, why are certain people in software like this?

To answer the question: Rust is a good systems programming language. But I will say this: many of the people piling into it right now don't actually need Rust.

Re: Ask HN: Is Rust worth investing in as a reliable C-alt given its recent saga?

#25

Post by fnordpiglet »

Yes. Excellent modern language with vibrant package management ecosystem. Some of the memory semantics can be a bit tricky to keep straight when to do what and why, but as you understand ownership and borrowing better it gets easier and more intuited. Good trait and generics strategies can be tricky, and asynch is a bit clumsy at times.

Re: Ask HN: Is Rust worth investing in as a reliable C-alt given its recent saga?

#26

Post by eek2121 »

Georgelemental wrote: post #13

Technically, the language is excellent. Organizationally, major corporations have invested a lot of resources into it, they won't allow it to fail. Community-wise, there are lots of friendly and supportive people in the quieter corners (this is true most everywhere, I think). That being said, my recommendation for learning systems programming would be to consider trying plain old C first. Rust's safety features are a…

I definitely have to agree with this. C was both easy and hard. Easy because the syntax and stdlib were both simple. Hard because you had to learn pointers/memory management.

Also, side note: C != C++.

Re: Ask HN: Is Rust worth investing in as a reliable C-alt given its recent saga?

#27

Post by shenman »

habitue wrote: post #20

Just a recommendation, but learn Rust first. Once you have a good intuition about mutability xor aliasing (which is what the borrow checker enforces), you'll actually write better C and C++ code should you need to. Personally, I think Rust is the future of systems programming and there's no more reason to learn C / C++ than there is a reason to learn FORTRAN or COBOL (specifically, the reason is only ever "I need to…

In my opinion, it's better to learn C first because it forces you to do a lot of painful memory management manually. You tend to really appreciates Rust's features when you understand how things can go wrong. Need absence to value presence.

Re: Ask HN: Is Rust worth investing in as a reliable C-alt given its recent saga?

#28

Post by MuffinFlavored »

Georgelemental wrote: post #13

Technically, the language is excellent. Organizationally, major corporations have invested a lot of resources into it, they won't allow it to fail. Community-wise, there are lots of friendly and supportive people in the quieter corners (this is true most everywhere, I think). That being said, my recommendation for learning systems programming would be to consider trying plain old C first. Rust's safety features are a…

> Rust's safety features are a godsend, but IMO easier to understand once you have experienced working without them.

Passing around a pointer becomes passing around a borrow or a Mutex or Arc>.

Not sure how you'd summarize Rc or Box

Re: Ask HN: Is Rust worth investing in as a reliable C-alt given its recent saga?

#29

Post by MuffinFlavored »

eek2121 wrote: post #26
Georgelemental wrote: post #13

Technically, the language is excellent. Organizationally, major corporations have invested a lot of resources into it, they won't allow it to fail. Community-wise, there are lots of friendly and supportive people in the quieter corners (this is true most everywhere, I think). That being said, my recommendation for learning systems programming would be to consider trying plain old C first. Rust's safety features are a…

I definitely have to agree with this. C was both easy and hard. Easy because the syntax and stdlib were both simple. Hard because you had to learn pointers/memory management. Also, side note: C != C++.

> Easy because the syntax and stdlib were both simple.

the stdlib could have like ~5 ease of life things (linked list, hashmap come to mind) that would have made a world of difference in my opinion

Re: Ask HN: Is Rust worth investing in as a reliable C-alt given its recent saga?

#30

Post by habitue »

shenman wrote: post #27
habitue wrote: post #20

Just a recommendation, but learn Rust first. Once you have a good intuition about mutability xor aliasing (which is what the borrow checker enforces), you'll actually write better C and C++ code should you need to. Personally, I think Rust is the future of systems programming and there's no more reason to learn C / C++ than there is a reason to learn FORTRAN or COBOL (specifically, the reason is only ever "I need to…

In my opinion, it's better to learn C first because it forces you to do a lot of painful memory management manually. You tend to really appreciates Rust's features when you understand how things can go wrong. Need absence to value presence.

I kinda disagree, I learned assembly after I learned C and I felt like I still appreciated it
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