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APT Rust requirement raises questions

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Re: APT Rust requirement raises questions

#101

Post by powerclue »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #37
jvanderbot wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'll experience some pushback on the assertion that that particular quote has a lot of arrogance or disdain in it. Building large legacy projects can be difficult and tapping into a thriving ecosystem of packages might be a good thing. But it's also possible to have "shiny object" or "grass is greener" syndrome.

“If you maintain a port without a working Rust toolchain, please ensure it has one within the next 6 months, or sunset the port.” If that’s not arrogant, I don’t know what is.

How is this arrogant? Are open source developers now responsible for ensuring every fork works with the dependencies and changes they make?

This seems like a long window, given to ports to say, "we are making changes that may impact you, heads up." The options presented are, frankly, the two primary options "add the dependency or tell people you are no longer a current port".

Re: APT Rust requirement raises questions

#102

Post by ModernMech »

dv35z wrote: post #31

Every time I consider learning Rust, I am thrown back by how... "janky" the syntax is. It seems to me that we ought to have a system-level language which builds upon the learnings of the past 20+ years. Can someone help me understand this? Why are we pushing forward with a language that has a Perl-esque unreadability...? Comparison: I often program in Python (and teach it) - and while it has its own syntax warts & fr…

> upon the learnings of the past 20+ years.

That's the thing though... Rust does build on many of those learnings. For starters, managing a big type system is better when some types are implicit, so Rust features type inference to ease the burden in that area. They've also learned from C++'s mistake of having a context sensitive grammar. They learned from C++'s template nightmare error messages so generics are easier to work with. They also applied learnings about immutability being a better default that mutability. The reason Rust is statically linked and packages are managed by a central repository is based on decades of seeing how difficult it is to build and deploy projects in C++, and how easy it is to build and deploy projects in the Node / NPM ecosystem. Pattern matching and tagged unions were added because of how well they worked in functional languages.

As for "Perl-esque unreadability" I submit that it's not unreadable, you are just unfamiliar. I myself find Chinese unreadable, but that doesn't mean Chinese is unreadable.

> Is there a "Kotlin for Rust"?

Kotlin came out 16 years after Java. Rust is relatively new, and it has built on other languages, but it's not the end point. Languages will be written that build on Rust, but that will take some time. Already many nascent projects are out there, but it is yet to be seen which will rise to the top.

Re: APT Rust requirement raises questions

#103

Post by maximilianburke »

dv35z wrote: post #31

Every time I consider learning Rust, I am thrown back by how... "janky" the syntax is. It seems to me that we ought to have a system-level language which builds upon the learnings of the past 20+ years. Can someone help me understand this? Why are we pushing forward with a language that has a Perl-esque unreadability...? Comparison: I often program in Python (and teach it) - and while it has its own syntax warts & fr…

In your opinion how does Rust compare to C++ for readability?

Re: APT Rust requirement raises questions

#104

Post by inetknght »

fn-mote wrote: post #20

The most interesting criticism / idea in the article was that the parts that are intended for Rust-ification should actually be removed from core apt. > it would be better to remove the code that is used to parse the .deb, .ar, and .tar formats [...] from APT entirely. It is only needed for two tools, apt-ftparchive and apt-extracttemplates [...] Another interesting, although perhaps tangential, criticism was that th…

> the "new solver" currently lacks a testsuite

To borrow a phrase I recently coined:

If it's not tested then it's not Engineered.

You'd think that core tools would have proper Software Engineering behind them. Alas, it's surprising how many do not.

Re: APT Rust requirement raises questions

#105

Post by frizlab »

tsimionescu wrote: post #100
fainpul wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a "Kotlin for Rust"? While it's not a systems language, have you tried Swift?

Swift is as relevant to this discussion as Common Lisp.

On the contrary, Swift is very relevant on this subject. It has high feature parity with rust, with a much readable syntax.

Re: APT Rust requirement raises questions

#108

Post by azdle »

handwarmers wrote: post #79
steveklabnik wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Syntax tends to be deeply personal. I would say the most straightforward answer to your question is "many people disagree that it is unreadable." Rust did build on the learnings of the past 20 years. Essentially all of its syntax was taken from other languages, even lifetimes.

Are the many who disagree that it is unreadable more than the people who agree? I have been involved with the language for a while now, and while I appreciate what you and many others have done for it, the sense that the group is immune to feedback just becomes too palpable too often. That, and the really aggressive PR. Rust is trying to solve a really important problem, and so far it might well be one of the best so…

I've found the rust core team to be very open to feedback. And maybe I've just been using Rust for too long, but the syntax feels quite reasonable to me.

Just for my own curiosity, do you have an examples of suggestions for how to improve the syntax that have been brought up and dismissed by the language maintainers?

Re: APT Rust requirement raises questions

#109

Post by morshu9001 »

Aurornis wrote: post #56
dv35z wrote: post #31

Every time I consider learning Rust, I am thrown back by how... "janky" the syntax is. It seems to me that we ought to have a system-level language which builds upon the learnings of the past 20+ years. Can someone help me understand this? Why are we pushing forward with a language that has a Perl-esque unreadability...? Comparison: I often program in Python (and teach it) - and while it has its own syntax warts & fr…

> Comparison: I often program in Python (and teach it) - and while it has its own syntax warts & frustrations - overall the language has a "pseudocode which compiles" approach, which I appreciate. I think this is why you don’t like Rust: In Rust you have to be explicit by design. Being explicit adds syntax. If you appreciate languages where you can write pseudocode and have the details handled automatically for you,…

Both Python and JS evolved by building on top of older versions, but somehow JS did a way better job than Python, even though Py forced a major breaking change.

Agree about Rust, all the syntax is necessary for what it's trying to do.

Re: APT Rust requirement raises questions

#110

Post by EugeneOZ »

dv35z wrote: post #31

Every time I consider learning Rust, I am thrown back by how... "janky" the syntax is. It seems to me that we ought to have a system-level language which builds upon the learnings of the past 20+ years. Can someone help me understand this? Why are we pushing forward with a language that has a Perl-esque unreadability...? Comparison: I often program in Python (and teach it) - and while it has its own syntax warts & fr…

Does it really add any value to the conversation?
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