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Rust is Software's Salvation

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Re: Rust is Software's Salvation

#121

Post by lobster_johnson »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #21
ZenoArrow wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Until we start seeing some more balanced (frankly, I'd settle for nuanced) discussion about the compromises made to get Rust's strengths, I'm staying the hell away from it." Look into the issues surrounding the borrow checker, that's one of Rust's main pain points. Long compilation times are another common issue. To Rust fans, I realise both of those issues will be addressed to some degree as MIR matures, but I'm l…

Another couple of flaws that could have a big impact on Rust. - It will be super hard to hire for Rust for a long time. It would be a very bold move to write your app in Rust if you plan to grow your tech team anytime soon. - I havn't tried learning Rust myself, but I have read that little that it can be a little tricky to start thinking the rust way (borrowing?) Plus the language "looks" hardcore. I wonder if that w…

There have comments on HN to the effect that, paradoxically, it's easy to find Haskell developers to hire, because there are so many jobs that require working with more mainstream languages. I would hope the same principle applies to Rust.

Re: Rust is Software's Salvation

#122

Post by dllthomas »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #121
jay_kyburz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another couple of flaws that could have a big impact on Rust. - It will be super hard to hire for Rust for a long time. It would be a very bold move to write your app in Rust if you plan to grow your tech team anytime soon. - I havn't tried learning Rust myself, but I have read that little that it can be a little tricky to start thinking the rust way (borrowing?) Plus the language "looks" hardcore. I wonder if that w…

There have comments on HN to the effect that, paradoxically, it's easy to find Haskell developers to hire, because there are so many jobs that require working with more mainstream languages. I would hope the same principle applies to Rust.

You might even hire some of us Haskell programmers.

Re: Rust is Software's Salvation

#123

Post by jstewartmobile »

mmstick wrote: post #116
jstewartmobile wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we were betting money, I'd put mine on Golang over Rust just because of the piles of money and effort Google keeps pouring into it. Rust is a little cooler, but I just don't see Mozilla having enough resources to keep-up the momentum long-term.

Go's not been receiving any piles of money from Google. Compare Go's API documentation to Rust's API documentation. Where's the `cargo` and `rustup` equivalent for Go? Compare the number of Go packages to the number of Rust packages. Seems Go's not doing so great despite being stable for much longer. > I just don't see Mozilla having enough resources to keep-up the momentum long-term. Did you forget about Samsung? Mo…

By TIOBE's stats, Go's popularity is up 1.74%. Rust's is up 0.316%.

http://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

Call it money or whatever, but Go seems to be getting substantial TLC from the people working on it for every point release.

Of course, this could just be an easier thing for them to do since their approach is not as ambitious as Rust's.

Re: Rust is Software's Salvation

#124

Post by [deleted] »

youdontknowtho wrote: post #31

Captain Obvious here with a public service announcement: Rust's safety guarantees dont extend to logic or protocol implementation problems or misconfigured security settings.the part of the article about service providers leaking creds or other info...Rust all the things and that will still happen. Some of this stuff is just too much. Also, why not work on lifetime and memory safety in a c based language? Rust looks…

[deleted]

Re: Rust is Software's Salvation

#125

Post by kazinator »

> Problems with C:

> [ ... ]

> Maybe a bug in GCC outputted [sic] the wrong machine code

How does Rust protect against a bug in Rust outputting the wrong machine code?

> Maybe a race condition in Linux gave an unprivileged process the ability to tamper with your program

Too bad the race-condition free Rust OS that can replace Linux isn't here yet.

Re: Rust is Software's Salvation

#126

Post by steveklabnik »

nialv7 wrote: post #120
ekidd wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe it is just the LLVM backend. It still is slow. It's a combination of two things, as far as I know. 1. The LLVM backend is slow. 2. The Rust frontend has historically abused the LLVM backend badly, by feeding it large amounts of barely optimized code. This is being worked on, but it's going to take a while.

> 2. The Rust frontend has historically abused the LLVM backend badly, by feeding it large amounts of barely optimized code. This is being worked on, but it's going to take a while. That's what I heard 2~3 years ago.

Yes, it's taken a _long time_ to pay down the technical debt from writing a compiler in itself for years. A huge step forward for doing so landed fairly recently, MIR, so progress is being made. It's already resulted in significant improvements, and will lead to more in the future.

Re: Rust is Software's Salvation

#127

Post by colemickens »

kazinator wrote: post #125

> Problems with C: > [ ... ] > Maybe a bug in GCC outputted [sic] the wrong machine code How does Rust protect against a bug in Rust outputting the wrong machine code? > Maybe a race condition in Linux gave an unprivileged process the ability to tamper with your program Too bad the race-condition free Rust OS that can replace Linux isn't here yet.

It's no Linux replacement, but Redox OS blows my mind with the functionality they have so far already.

Re: Rust is Software's Salvation

#128

Post by qznc »

hubert123 wrote: post #53
qznc wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you are down voted. Compile time is a Rust issue for me. I'm spoiled by D. However I'm not sure if borrow checking is inherently slow. The release notes are discouraging. 30% faster? Aim for 10 times faster. Maybe it is just the LLVM backend. It still is slow.

D is not fast enough either, I only like Java (with the eclipse compiler), Golang and obviously the dynamic languages

Go is fast. D is fast, but its compile time meta programming features can make it arbitrarily slow.

Java, Python, etc actually compile at run time so the comparison is invalid. You can measure the full iteration speed, but then image based wins (Smalltalk, Common Lisp).

Re: Rust is Software's Salvation

#129

Post by _ph_ »

zzzcpan wrote: post #99
rokosbasilisk wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yea, one of the reasons python gained traction was it being used in alot of cs101 classes. I wouldnt use rust, but I have used go just to learn

What about Pascal, isn't it still more widely used in cs101 than anything else? And yet, no traction.

In the 90ies, Pascal had a lot of traction here in Europe. Turbo Pascal was the default language to use for DOS programming. I remember from my physics department that any computer-controlled devices came with Turbo Pascal units for controlling them. And later on, Delphi had its success, I guess it was more killed by bad management then anything else.

Interestingly, Go picks up a lot of Pascal (and of course Modula) tradition, as Robert Griesemer worked with Wirth before. A lot of the Wirth language family's ideas made it into Go clothed into a C syntax.

Re: Rust is Software's Salvation

#130

Post by pjmlp »

rubiquity wrote: post #6

The amount of hype Rust is getting is not going to end well for Rust. This reminds me of Ruby during 2007-2010 where it went from Patron Saint to Scapegoat for every startup that failed using it. Ruby survived it, and I'm sure Rust will too, but that doesn't make it obnoxious for everyone else who inevitably gets swept up in the craze and crash. Programming is hard. Programming will always be hard. Better/newer tools…

As Alan Kay says, we have moved from a technical community to a pop driven one, so these hype cycles will never end while this mentality carries on.

Having said this, Go got its killer application in the form of the main language driving container implementations.

Rust might eventually get its one beyond the current browser implementation and get adopted by an OS vendor.

Just with Apple doing Swift, Microsoft .NET Native and C++/GSL, maybe it is left for Google and their Fuchsia project or an embedded OS vendor to do it.

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