Rust Guide
doc.rust-lang.org
Rust Guide
1–10 of 147 posts
Re: Rust Guide
#2Honest initial impressions from my quick glance. This guide is confused. It reads at times like an informal conversation... lots of exclamations. That's pedantic, the real confusion comes from the target audience. As a programmer, I want as little cruft as possible. Get me to examples and how this differentiates from C. As a non programmer, teach me the basics of types and logic.
From that thought, it's failing at both. As a programmer, stop talking to me informally and redefining types as one liners. As a newbie, you're explaining basic shell constructs as if I don't know, then trying to sum up strings in a one liner.
I know it's an early draft, and I know Steve is an awesome dude. My advice - figure out your audience or else break into two guides. Be terse with me, be overly explanatory to a beginner. This now seems to sway on both sides of that line, and likely will frustrate both groups.
Re: Rust Guide
#3Also note that the installation section is a bit out of date: they have Windows x64 binary installers now:
Re: Rust Guide
#4Honest initial impressions from my quick glance. This guide is confused. It reads at times like an informal conversation... lots of exclamations. That's pedantic, the real confusion comes from the target audience. As a programmer, I want as little cruft as possible. Get me to examples and how this differentiates from C. As a non programmer, teach me the basics of types and logic. From that thought, it's failing at bo…
If you want more details, less cruft, you probably like to read the Manual: http://doc.rust-lang.org/rust.html
The Guide is fine as a tutorial and where does it not teach the basics?
So your impression is definitely not mine. "Stop talkting to me informally" is also very subjective. I very much prefer the informal way.
Re: Rust Guide
#5Honest initial impressions from my quick glance. This guide is confused. It reads at times like an informal conversation... lots of exclamations. That's pedantic, the real confusion comes from the target audience. As a programmer, I want as little cruft as possible. Get me to examples and how this differentiates from C. As a non programmer, teach me the basics of types and logic. From that thought, it's failing at bo…
I've always enjoyed informal guides, but oddly enough I share your frustration.
Heck, I loved "Learn You a Haskell," yet this one reads very patronizing for some reason, and I can't figure out why.
Re: Rust Guide
#6Honest initial impressions from my quick glance. This guide is confused. It reads at times like an informal conversation... lots of exclamations. That's pedantic, the real confusion comes from the target audience. As a programmer, I want as little cruft as possible. Get me to examples and how this differentiates from C. As a non programmer, teach me the basics of types and logic. From that thought, it's failing at bo…
This seems to be fundamental problem with programming texts. I was reading a couple of javascript books recently (eloquent javascript and javascript allonge) and I was struck by the sheer amount of background knowledge you needed to have.
Most of that I've picked up over the last 20 years, but not all of it (or else I wouldn't be reading the books) so I constantly felt like I was having something I knew explained to me in too much detail or having crazy new concepts thrown at me without enough context.
I mostly felt sorry for total newcomers, particularly as I realised most of my knowledge was historical trivia or workarounds rather than actual useful. Once I noticed the above, the amount of crufty irrelevances we have to deal with became obvious, and that's doubly true in JS for the browser.
My only constructive thought was to break things into smaller skippable sections. I personally would skim rather than skip, but advanced warning that the section would only cover stuff I thought I already knew would be helpful.
Re: Rust Guide
#7Please Rust-lang, why, oh why, do you choose to name function 'fn' and module 'mod', dont you expect to read any of the programs you write!?
How is anyone supposed to read fn main(). Fun main? Fen main? F of N? Is it related to ln in println?
Ive tried rust, but it just doesnt parse well in my mind. More time is spent for me parseing out the bullshit terse keywords than the meaning of the program.
Ada gets this right, there you have to write exactly what you mean, end begin, if then. Simple clear.
Terseness, shorts and abbrevations, thts now hw you wrt anyng.
Re: Rust Guide
#8Please Rust-lang, why, oh why, do you choose to name function 'fn' and module 'mod', dont you expect to read any of the programs you write!? How is anyone supposed to read fn main(). Fun main? Fen main? F of N? Is it related to ln in println? Ive tried rust, but it just doesnt parse well in my mind. More time is spent for me parseing out the bullshit terse keywords than the meaning of the program. Ada gets this right…
You are not supposed to read programs aloud. What do you think it is, poetry? 'fn' is a symbol.
Re: Rust Guide
#9 let x = 5i;
Re: Rust Guide
#10Honest initial impressions from my quick glance. This guide is confused. It reads at times like an informal conversation... lots of exclamations. That's pedantic, the real confusion comes from the target audience. As a programmer, I want as little cruft as possible. Get me to examples and how this differentiates from C. As a non programmer, teach me the basics of types and logic. From that thought, it's failing at bo…
Hopefully some of the issues you're noticing will get fleshed out before the guide is officially linked from the rust homepage.
I do agree with you though. I felt the same way about the guide from the first time I read (parts of) it, and I know we're not alone. I've commented before about how it's impossible to nail down the target audience, but it seems overly informal as a replacement to the current tutorials, especially compared to the "additional guides" that were linked to at the conclusion of the tutorial which really got down to business quickly.
I've long been hoping that something like rustbyexample.com gets officially sanctioned and linked to from the homepage alongside the guide. As a small metric, the current tutorial is 942 to Hello World, the new guide is 1595 words, and rustbyexample.com is 239 words.