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My negative views on Rust (2023)

chrisdone.com

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Re: My negative views on Rust (2023)

#71

Post by [deleted] »

Const-me wrote: post #69
Animats wrote: post #11

My big problem with Rust is too much "unsafe" code. Every time I've had to debug a hard problem, it's been in unsafe code in someone else's crate. Or in something that was C underneath. I'm about 50,000 lines of Rust into a metaverse client, and my own code has zero "unsafe". I'm not even calling "mem", or transmuting anything. Yet this has both networking and graphics, and goes fast. I just do not see why people see…

> I just do not see why people seem to use "unsafe" so much Because it’s impossible to implement any non-trivial data structures in safe Rust. Even Vec has unsafe code in the implementation to allocate heap memory. When you need efficient trees or graphs (I doubt any non-trivial software doesn’t need at least one of them), unsafe code is the only reasonable choice. C++ does pretty much the same under the hood, but th…

[deleted]

Re: My negative views on Rust (2023)

#72

Post by timeon »

tptacek wrote: post #19
dvektor wrote: post #14

I agree with a couple points here, specifically I agree that choosing a language based on it's community (and not it's ecosystem) is just silly. And we all know that async ended up being a bit of a thorn in rust's side. But yeah, rust is very much a systems language: so it will be forcing you to think about memory layout one way or the other. Idk how valid of a complaint that is when you really consider that, and spe…

A complication of the "Rust is a systems programming language" thing is that people adopt definitions of "systems" of varying expansiveness to suit the situation. There are unquestionable systems programming domains --- the kernel is a great example, and one where it's easy to see why Rust is an exciting proposition; same with browsers, the "second OS" everyone runs --- and then more questionable domains. Is the fram…

Yeah I use often Rust where Python would be enough. But unless I really need quick/interactive feedback (for exploratory stuff ie.: Jupyter with plots), Rust suits me well.

Re: My negative views on Rust (2023)

#73

Post by awesome_dude »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #3

I've read this before, it's been passed around the Rust community a few times. The annotated tl;dr is: Chris doesn't want to learn how hardware works, they don't want to learn how to write optimal software, they don't want to write safe software, they just want to write in a language they already know because they're not comfortable with learning other languages because their home language is a functional language (H…

So, we should be focused on attacking the author, not the points raised in the article?

Re: My negative views on Rust (2023)

#75

Post by timeon »

brink wrote: post #25
VeejayRampay wrote: post #8

rust is fine, it's a solid mix of performance and expressiveness, it has good constructs and it's gaining traction it's hard to learn so we shall see what kind of niche it can carve for itself, but it's fine

> it's hard to learn And as long as Rust remains popular, this is why we will witness endless complaining about it. Most devs are lazy, and would rather sweep complexity under the rug and pretend it doesn't exist until it becomes a real problem they can't ignore anymore. That's fine. But no need to be so vocal about it. At this point, people whining about Rust is more of a trope than people proselytizing it.

> At this point, people whining about Rust is more of a trope than people proselytizing it.

This is common pattern reminds me cross-fit/veganism/i-use-arch/etc. Almost like an echo.

Re: My negative views on Rust (2023)

#76

Post by cmrdporcupine »

nine_k wrote: post #54
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, Rc/Arc absolutely solves this problem. It's not super idiomatic to go crazy with using it like that, but it's possible/acceptable. Using SlotMap and integer ids, etc. doesn't I think offer any advantage.

Doesn't SlotMap save RAM and pointer dereferences?

What is a slotmap lookup... if not a pointer dereference, or at least a dereference out of a vector likely on heap... so probably a pointer...?

Re: My negative views on Rust (2023)

#77

Post by throwawaymaths »

jkelleyrtp wrote: post #38

"There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses". --- Glad to see fluffy negative articles about Rust shooting up the first slot of HN in 20 minutes. It means Rust has made finally made it mainstream :) --- The points, addressed, I guess? - Rust has panics, and this is bad: ...okay? Nobody is writing panic handling code, it's not a form of error handling - Rust inserts…

I've seen a case where the rust panic handler is used in FFI and this creates a memory leak.

Re: My negative views on Rust (2023)

#78

Post by cmrdporcupine »

tptacek wrote: post #33
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, Rc/Arc absolutely solves this problem. It's not super idiomatic to go crazy with using it like that, but it's possible/acceptable. Using SlotMap and integer ids, etc. doesn't I think offer any advantage.

I feel pretty comfortable with Rc and Arc, read the "too many lists" book, &c. and feel like it is not actually simple to model trees with Rc? What am I missing? I'd love to be convinced I'm wrong about this (I want to like Rust more than I do).

A tree of Rc/Arc is a tree of references, and is really no different than a Java or Python reference value, except that you'll have to do explicit .clone()s

Is it mutability that's tripping you up? Because that's the only gotcha I can think of. Yes, you won't get mutability of the content of those references unless you stick a RefCell or a Mutex inside them.

Re: My negative views on Rust (2023)

#79

Post by pshc »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #74

Who uses panic instead of `?` and anyhow / Box (error propagation?) I think there is even a (gross) way to achieve try/catch around a block of code that panics?

Yeah, panic/assert is only for Things That Really Shouldn’t Ever Fail, If They Do Our Base Assumptions Have Broken.

whereas Error is for things that are unlikely to fail, like network/filesystem requests and recoverable logic bugs.

Re: My negative views on Rust (2023)

#80

Post by n_plus_1_acc »

fiedzia wrote: post #60
jkelleyrtp wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, maybe? If you come into Rust thinking you're going to write doubly-linked lists all day and want to structure everything like that, you're going to have a bad time. But then in python you run into stuff like: ``` def func(list = []): list.append(1) ``` and list is actually a singleton. You want to pull your hair out since this is practically impossible to hunt down in a big codebase. Rust is just different, a…

> this is practically impossible to hunt down in a big codebase use linters, they keep getting smarter

rustc is a good smart linter
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