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Is Rust Web Yet?

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Re: Is Rust Web Yet?

#131

Post by muglug »

csomar wrote: post #118
muglug wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust has smart type checking. The really smart stuff is (IMO) the beauty of the borrow checker. In PHP, modern typecheckers can verify that the first element always exists on an array after an emptiness check: if ($some_arr) { echo reset($arr); } Whereas in Rust you have to explicitly unwrap: if !some_vec.empty() { print!("{}", some_vec.first().unwrap()); // .. more code } The Rust version requires you to use your in…

> The Rust version requires you to use your intuition to figure out that `unwrap()` will never panic here. You should not use `unwrap` in a production product. It's there for prototyping and I think it's a mistake they have it (though the language already requires a good upfront time investment as it is). Use `?` and have your error propagate accordingly to the top of the chain. Have your own error types and convert…

> don't "convert" PHP code into Rust. Re-design your program.

Trust me, I am!

For example, I'm rewriting all the (very-efficient) PHP regex code to a much more convoluted version because Regex::new is so costly.

Less sarcastically, I am embracing the Rust Way where necessary. My complaint is that the Rust Way sometimes forces me to depart from the idealised pseudocode version of a given algorithm much more drastically than PHP does.

Re: Is Rust Web Yet?

#132

Post by bfrog »

chx wrote: post #120
csomar wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree on the things you've lost. > - concise, readable code Rust code is significantly more readable. Use the type system to your advantage. > - - really smart type inference Rust has really smart type inference too and only rarely ask for an explicit type. I've found that I prefer annotating my types. It adds to documentation and readability. > - a bunch of time thinking about the borrow checker You can use Arc…

> Rust code is significantly more readable. You should put down the Rust kool-aid. Rust is incredibly hard to read due to its sigil and abbreviation heaviness.

I guess I didn’t see it that way, then again I’ve been bitten by C++ which is crazy land for overloads

Re: Is Rust Web Yet?

#133

Post by LAC-Tech »

tialaramex wrote: post #103
LAC-Tech wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a stint as a C++14 programmer, and I switched over to C++20 for this project. You covered the downsides pretty well, big upsides for C++: - ability to use C libraries directly - and thus original C API docs. I've got battlescars from NPMs deep dependency trees, and cargo is a similar story. - I don't need the (very patient and knowledgeable!) people on rust discord to hold my hand every day. There's a stackover…

Of course you will also write the 5% edge case where you've wrongly convinced yourself that it's fine. In general the sort of self-discipline that would likely ensure this doesn't happen also satisfies the borrow checker which might be why some people find this not a problem and others really struggle. Worth somebody studying perhaps.

I think that's a big philosophical difference I have with the rust culture - static analysis is a tool, not a religion. Useful, but nowhere near enough by itself to make reliable software.

Re: Is Rust Web Yet?

#134

Post by muglug »

ibraheemdev wrote: post #116
muglug wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust has smart type checking. The really smart stuff is (IMO) the beauty of the borrow checker. In PHP, modern typecheckers can verify that the first element always exists on an array after an emptiness check: if ($some_arr) { echo reset($arr); } Whereas in Rust you have to explicitly unwrap: if !some_vec.empty() { print!("{}", some_vec.first().unwrap()); // .. more code } The Rust version requires you to use your in…

You can usually use pattern matching to get around a check followed by an unwrap. I would rewrite your example as: if let [first, ..] = &some_vec { print!("{}", first); // .. more code }

Thanks, I did not know about that particular solution — that adheres more closely to the idealised pseudocode than any of the other Rust alternatives.

Re: Is Rust Web Yet?

#135

Post by verdagon »

zozbot234 wrote: post #98
LAC-Tech wrote: post #45

I spent about the past month learning rust - and decided it just wasn't a usable language for me. I think what it comes down to is that I'm just not that into bondage and discipline from a compiler. Yes, I know, it's trying to make my code 'safe', and I'm horribly cavalier and I should feel bad, but: 1. the borrow checker rejects valid programs, has a lot of corner cases it can't catch, and is in active development 2…

> has a lot of corner cases it can't catch The instances of safe code that the borrow checker can't verify as such are not "corner cases" by and large, they're genuinely non-trivial patterns, often with non-obvious drawbacks such as lack of composability/modularity. Rust devs and researchers are working on better abstractions to support those cases, but these are very much the exception, not the rule. > people routin…

> The instances of safe code that the borrow checker can't verify as such are not "corner cases" by and large, they're genuinely non-trivial patterns, often with non-obvious drawbacks such as lack of composability/modularity.

Unfortunately, the borrow checker can't handle a basic observer without falling back to patterns that violate encapsulation. The observer pattern is one of the best patterns for composability/modularity, and I find that the borrow-checker-compliant solutions are more complex and don't solve anything but rather move problems somewhere else.

It's cases like these that make me appreciate Rust's wisdom of adding Rc>.

Re: Is Rust Web Yet?

#136

Post by staticassertion »

chx wrote: post #120
csomar wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree on the things you've lost. > - concise, readable code Rust code is significantly more readable. Use the type system to your advantage. > - - really smart type inference Rust has really smart type inference too and only rarely ask for an explicit type. I've found that I prefer annotating my types. It adds to documentation and readability. > - a bunch of time thinking about the borrow checker You can use Arc…

> Rust code is significantly more readable. You should put down the Rust kool-aid. Rust is incredibly hard to read due to its sigil and abbreviation heaviness.

I think that's obviously a matter of opinion. I don't think Rust is hard to read at all, nor do I think of it as being particularly sigil heavy, but that's me. I think the syntax is probably unfamiliar for some, and familiarity is almost always what people mean when they say "readability".

Coming from c++, Rust was pretty familiar. PHP isn't that hard to read either.

Re: Is Rust Web Yet?

#137

Post by staticassertion »

muglug wrote: post #112
csomar wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree on the things you've lost. > - concise, readable code Rust code is significantly more readable. Use the type system to your advantage. > - - really smart type inference Rust has really smart type inference too and only rarely ask for an explicit type. I've found that I prefer annotating my types. It adds to documentation and readability. > - a bunch of time thinking about the borrow checker You can use Arc…

Rust has smart type checking. The really smart stuff is (IMO) the beauty of the borrow checker. In PHP, modern typecheckers can verify that the first element always exists on an array after an emptiness check: if ($some_arr) { echo reset($arr); } Whereas in Rust you have to explicitly unwrap: if !some_vec.empty() { print!("{}", some_vec.first().unwrap()); // .. more code } The Rust version requires you to use your in…

That sort of "flow typing" is extremely cool and I'd love to see it added to Rust. Perhaps something like mypy's proposed TypeGuard.

Re: Is Rust Web Yet?

#139

Post by muglug »

neandrake wrote: post #124
muglug wrote: post #71

I've spent the last few months porting the guts of a 100 KLOC PHP command-line utility I wrote to Rust. Thanks to the wonderful Rust documentation it's been a mostly painless endeavour. What I've gained as a result: - execution speed (about 3x faster, single-threaded) - better-documented data structures Things I've lost: - ease of iteration - concise, readable code - really smart type inference - a bunch of time thin…

I imagine that especially for a command line utility you also gained an easier deployment story when using rust, given the static linking and lack of interpreter. Requiring PHP to be installed to use a tool has caused me issues, especially with some of the recent PHP 8 updates introducing breaking changes. It’s a better story for PHP on a server where it’s more centrally managed.

The deployment story of the PHP tool in question is pretty good thanks to the semi-official Composer package management system (it hasn't been officially endorsed, but everybody uses it).

People just run `composer install --dev vimeo/psalm` and it works. It can also run on any web server that runs PHP, so I have it running on psalm.dev

OfC the Rust equivalent is very easy to package, and also runs reliably in the browser via WASM (currently ~1.5MB compressed).

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