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If I can turn that stupid thing off, it might be worth learning Rust after all.
If I can turn that stupid thing off, it might be worth learning Rust after all.
There is no practical need to enforce borrow checking on all debug builds: it suffices, for beginners, to know that a production build would fail. Forbidding any sort of testing until after the borrow checker is wholly satisfied generates pointless frustration. Can Rust really afford to drive beginners away? For Rust not to fizzle and die, it needs thousands to adopt it for each who already has. Saying "I persevered, you could too, given some backbone" is a recipe for failure.
Is it strictly worse to (1) let beginners deal with borrow checking a little later in their process, or for (2) the language to fizzle and die? Dying is still a punishingly likely prospect. Network effects matter. I doubt that failing to achieve mainstream adoption would be good for Rust, for current Rust users, or the world.
Everyone considering a language to learn has plenty of choices. A language rarely gets a second try.
If Rust is not to fizzle like Ada (which got overwhelmingly more investment than Rust has had) it needs a radically faster adoption rate. While several traps imperil Rust's wider adoption -- pathetic compile speed is another: consider JIT in the compiler! -- the borrow checker is an important roadblock for beginners. There is no practical need to enforce borrow checking on all debug builds: it suffices, for beginners…
1. The compiler has been speeding up a lot, it’s about as fast as C++ on large projects.
2. The borrow checker makes Rust usable by beginners. Imagine writing complex pointer code without it. In rust, a beginner can do that safely.
3. Rust is picking up a lot of steam. It’s getting adopted in a bunch of different industries. Rest assured, it’s not going to fail at this point.
If Rust is not to fizzle like Ada (which got overwhelmingly more investment than Rust has had) it needs a radically faster adoption rate. While several traps imperil Rust's wider adoption -- pathetic compile speed is another: consider JIT in the compiler! -- the borrow checker is an important roadblock for beginners. There is no practical need to enforce borrow checking on all debug builds: it suffices, for beginners…
Rust isn't targeting the NodeJS crowd at large. It is targeting the systems programming and C++ crowd. And spoken by someone who still has his C++98 hardcover by Stroustrup on his shelf, the alternatives in that space are not one iota easier. The fact that C++ does not mandate the use of smart pointers and requires external tools like Valgrind to find memory access bugs is the problem, not a compiler that tells you where you're wrong.
Security is a pain, but it's not a bug. If you want easier, go for a garbage-collected language—though they rarely help with multithreading faults.
Rust ain't fizzling. It's exactly where it needs to be, solving the kinds of problems it was designed for. There is no need for any one language to solve any and every kind of problem. Different tools for different tasks.
If Rust is not to fizzle like Ada (which got overwhelmingly more investment than Rust has had) it needs a radically faster adoption rate. While several traps imperil Rust's wider adoption -- pathetic compile speed is another: consider JIT in the compiler! -- the borrow checker is an important roadblock for beginners. There is no practical need to enforce borrow checking on all debug builds: it suffices, for beginners…
Almost every sentence in this comment is wrong. 1. The compiler has been speeding up a lot, it’s about as fast as C++ on large projects. 2. The borrow checker makes Rust usable by beginners. Imagine writing complex pointer code without it. In rust, a beginner can do that safely. 3. Rust is picking up a lot of steam. It’s getting adopted in a bunch of different industries. Rest assured, it’s not going to fail at this…
If you imagine the borrow checker does not drive away a large majority of prospective users, you live in a dream world.
If you imagine the still-slow compiler does not drive away users, you live in a dream world.
Wishful thinking is always a poor substitute for corrective action.
If Rust is not to fizzle like Ada (which got overwhelmingly more investment than Rust has had) it needs a radically faster adoption rate. While several traps imperil Rust's wider adoption -- pathetic compile speed is another: consider JIT in the compiler! -- the borrow checker is an important roadblock for beginners. There is no practical need to enforce borrow checking on all debug builds: it suffices, for beginners…
You really think things will improve by essentially wrapping entire Rust programs in a huge unsafe block? Rust isn't targeting the NodeJS crowd at large. It is targeting the systems programming and C++ crowd. And spoken by someone who still has his C++98 hardcover by Stroustrup on his shelf, the alternatives in that space are not one iota easier. The fact that C++ does not mandate the use of smart pointers and requir…
And, if you imagine Rust has already succeeded, or that its future is assured, you have not been paying attention elsewhere, either. Failure is absolutely the norm for programming languages.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Almost every sentence in this comment is wrong. 1. The compiler has been speeding up a lot, it’s about as fast as C++ on large projects. 2. The borrow checker makes Rust usable by beginners. Imagine writing complex pointer code without it. In rust, a beginner can do that safely. 3. Rust is picking up a lot of steam. It’s getting adopted in a bunch of different industries. Rest assured, it’s not going to fail at this…
Everyone was way more confident about the future of Ada, and with better reasons. If you imagine the borrow checker does not drive away a large majority of prospective users, you live in a dream world. If you imagine the still-slow compiler does not drive away users, you live in a dream world. Wishful thinking is always a poor substitute for corrective action.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everyone was way more confident about the future of Ada, and with better reasons. If you imagine the borrow checker does not drive away a large majority of prospective users, you live in a dream world. If you imagine the still-slow compiler does not drive away users, you live in a dream world. Wishful thinking is always a poor substitute for corrective action.
Maybe you misunderstood. Rust is already used widely in certain industries and quickly growing in many others. It’s not a question of if rust will succeed at this point. It already has. It’s soon to be allowed in upstream Linux kernel drivers, for example.
It still seems possible that Rust could, someday, come to be used widely, beyond the HN echo chamber, but only with serious action. Wishful thinking has always reliably failed to drive mainstream language adoption.