Most of these is confirmation of easily observable reality, but the 4x difference in rollback rates, jesus christ.
Rust in Android: move fast and fix things
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Re: Rust in Android: move fast and fix things
#12This isn't control for confounding factors. For example: folks are more likely to rewrite stuff that is well-understood, and stuff that is well-understood is going to have shorter review times and lower rollback rate. That gnarly horrid mess that only a few greybeards grok and has massive test coverage, a long tail of requirements enforced by tests and experience, and a culture of extreme rigor? Longer reviews, more…
I'd say that this is likely the most likely to be rewritten actually, because high test coverage is a massive enabler in such a rewrite, and because having a project that “only a few greybeards grok” sounds like a big organizational liability.
That being said, and while I'm pretty convinced that Rust bring massive benefits, I agree with you that these measurements shouldn't be taken as if it was a rigorous scientific proof. It's more of one additional anecdotal evidence that Rust is good.
Re: Rust in Android: move fast and fix things
#13This is the bomb that sank C++ in 2026. Have fun justifying that Rust is "also" unsafe, with the right tools you can achieve the same in C++, if you're a great dev you can do even better, etc.
It can be annoying to write "safe" code, but once it meets a certain standard I can be confident in multithreaded applications I write.
I would like to use rust to write android apps. I don't really like the whole android studio java thing.
Re: Rust in Android: move fast and fix things
#14This is the bomb that sank C++ in 2026. Have fun justifying that Rust is "also" unsafe, with the right tools you can achieve the same in C++, if you're a great dev you can do even better, etc.
(doesn't mean it's not an improvement on C++)
Re: Rust in Android: move fast and fix things
#15This isn't control for confounding factors. For example: folks are more likely to rewrite stuff that is well-understood, and stuff that is well-understood is going to have shorter review times and lower rollback rate. That gnarly horrid mess that only a few greybeards grok and has massive test coverage, a long tail of requirements enforced by tests and experience, and a culture of extreme rigor? Longer reviews, more…
Personal experience also provides a compelling reason, my experience is absolutely that people are more inclined to rewrite the things that are causing trouble in a new language.
It's not a blinded randomly controlled trial of course, it's observational data. You can't be completely sure there isn't a confounding factor that explains the data, but it seems far more likely than not that it is a real effect.
Re: Rust in Android: move fast and fix things
#16Re: Rust in Android: move fast and fix things
#17This is the bomb that sank C++ in 2026. Have fun justifying that Rust is "also" unsafe, with the right tools you can achieve the same in C++, if you're a great dev you can do even better, etc.
rust has other advantages. I think cargo is better than cmake. I think the syntax is better, I think the way dependencies and modules are handled is better. It can be annoying to write "safe" code, but once it meets a certain standard I can be confident in multithreaded applications I write. I would like to use rust to write android apps. I don't really like the whole android studio java thing.
I expect that Google is using neither of these for most of their own code, but rather their own build system (which I think is the same between the languages).
I absolutely agree if you aren't Google though.
Re: Rust in Android: move fast and fix things
#18This is the bomb that sank C++ in 2026. Have fun justifying that Rust is "also" unsafe, with the right tools you can achieve the same in C++, if you're a great dev you can do even better, etc.
Re: Rust in Android: move fast and fix things
#19Re: Rust in Android: move fast and fix things
#20At this point I feel like it's no longer an uphill climb to get Rust into foundational, mission-critical code adoption. The benefits are so obvious. Maybe it's just a lingering religious war? In any case, I'm glad we're seeing more and more evidence and case-studies of why "rewrite it in Rust" isn't just a meme.