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I Hope Rust Does Not Oxidize Everything

gavinhoward.com

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Re: I Hope Rust Does Not Oxidize Everything

#31

Post by cassepipe »

fire_lake wrote: post #14
oDot wrote: post #7

This is my current mental model for picking a language, considering just the language itself: - Backends: Gleam or other BEAM - Web frontend: Gleam - Mobile apps: Dart + Flutter - Specialized mobile apps: Swift and Kotlin - Blazing fast: Zig - Blazing fast and safest: Rust - Fast performance and iteration: Go Would love to hear additions and corrections. My only problem with this is I'm not a fan of Go's syntax and I…

OCaml could almost replace all of those. I don’t think there is a BEAM compiler backend yet. I’m not very experienced with BEAM, but could its features be delivered with a framework on top of a different stack? I know Akka is popular.

The OCaml backend for the BEAM was called Caramel but has been abandoned after his author went on working on hiw own build system, warp.

Re: I Hope Rust Does Not Oxidize Everything

#32

Post by ceronman »

The author seems very anxious because Rust is getting traction and they don't like Rust. They're afraid that one day Rust will become a "monoculture" and everything will be written in it.

I like Rust, but I consider this very, very unlikely.

Rust has actually brought more choice to the programming language scenario. If we're talking about monoculture, let's talk about C/C++. For decades this was the only viable option for systems programming. All new languages were focusing on a higher lever. Languages for lower level stuff were rare. There was D, but it never got enough traction.

Then Rust appeared and there is finally an alternative. And not only that, I because of that, other language designers decided to create new systems languages, and now we have Zig, and Odin, and Vale, etc.

So if anything, Rust is helping in breaking the monoculture, not creating it. C and C++ are not going away, but now we have alternatives.

And I think it's important to acknowledge that even if you don't like a language, if you see a bunch of software being written in such language, it's because the language is useful. I don't like C++ but I admit it's damn useful! People are writing interesting software in Rust because they find it useful.

Re: I Hope Rust Does Not Oxidize Everything

#33

Post by cassepipe »

deathtrader666 wrote: post #21
fire_lake wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OCaml could almost replace all of those. I don’t think there is a BEAM compiler backend yet. I’m not very experienced with BEAM, but could its features be delivered with a framework on top of a different stack? I know Akka is popular.

>>> don’t think there is a BEAM compiler backend yet I think there's something close - https://caramel.run/manual/

The project has been abandonned : https://github.com/leostera/caramel/discussions/102

Re: I Hope Rust Does Not Oxidize Everything

#34

Post by rational_indian »

olalonde wrote: post #20

Maybe that will sound banal to some but C would be so much more enjoyable to me if it had a "cargo" system and no implicit imports.

That's the problem with C. It cannot have a sane cargo like system. The language is not built for writing libraries. There is a reason why everyone keeps reinventing the wheel when it comes to datastructures in C. Where is STL for C?

Re: I Hope Rust Does Not Oxidize Everything

#35

Post by masklinn »

olalonde wrote: post #22
WhereIsTheTruth wrote: post #4

Projects adopting rust makes contributing less fun and more painful I tried to work on bug fix for Zed, waiting 30 seconds everytime you change a value was _very_ painful

At least, compiling is always straightforward. With C, there's a good chance the build will fail for whatever reason (e.g. your OS missing some header files).

Yep, IME rust makes contribution easier because I generally don’t need to hunt for setup instructions which may or may not exist and may or may not work for my system.

And the compiler at least attempts to tell me what’s wrong when it fails to compile (and give suggestion though that is very hit or miss for non trivial case).

The one case where the compiler is singularly unhelpful is when trying to hunt down why a future is !Send tho.

Re: I Hope Rust Does Not Oxidize Everything

#36

Post by zkldi »

I'll bite: What specific parts of rust syntax do people find so ugly?

I keep hearing this from decent chunks of people who don't write rust, but the language doesn't seem that far off C to me. It's certainly no haskell.

Re: I Hope Rust Does Not Oxidize Everything

#37

Post by logicchains »

rapsey wrote: post #16
usrnm wrote: post #5

Within Rust is a smaller, simpler, safer language struggling to get out

Without a GC? No there is not. You are welcome to try of course, but unless you have a PhD in type theory I doubt your chances.

There's a smaller, simpler, safer language lying in Rust called "Rust without async", which would be good enough for the 99% of use-cases that don't need absolute-lowest-possible-latency async.

Re: I Hope Rust Does Not Oxidize Everything

#38

Post by K0nserv »

The author makes the best argument for Rust in the linked post[0]

    Rust is great for teams because it removes many things that make working on team code dangerous. The items mentioned above are some.

    I work alone, however, because I like to keep my code in my head and working with people means parts of the code are only in their head.

    This also means that the bigger the language is, the less space I have in my head for the code.

    Rust is too big for my small brain, unfortunately.
Most code is written in teams and even software with a single author needs a plan for when the maintainer steps down. Besides this I disagree with the author's assertion that Rust is not well suited for them, in fact I think it's strictly better than C because it often obviates the need to keep stuff in your head. Take lifetimes, in C you have to keep track of pointers and their lifetime in your head, and by definition all other maintainers have to do the same, in Rust the compiler does that for you, less to keep in your head. In fact I think the ability offload things from your head to the compiler is one of Rust's great strength. This ties in with compile times too, yes Rust is very slow to compile, but the compiler also does a whole lot more work than the C compiler. Obviously we want rustc to be as fast as possible given the work it's doing, but it will never be as fast as a C or Go compiler.

0: https://gavinhoward.com/2023/02/why-i-use-c-when-i-believe-i...

Re: I Hope Rust Does Not Oxidize Everything

#40

Post by GardenLetter27 »

zkldi wrote: post #36

I'll bite: What specific parts of rust syntax do people find so ugly? I keep hearing this from decent chunks of people who don't write rust, but the language doesn't seem that far off C to me. It's certainly no haskell.

Lifetime bounds on a trait object argument can be confusing.

I have to look up how to write the where part properly every single time.

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