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Rust is Software's Salvation

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Re: Rust is Software's Salvation

#141

Post by coldtea »

w8rbt wrote: post #16
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…

I agree. C is fast because it can be unsafe. Skip all the safety checks and run like hell (if you need or want to). We don't care what size that array is, we just want to go really fast. Safety checks come with a performance cost. Rust claims to be faster than C and safer than C at the same time. That's not possible.

>Rust claims to be faster than C and safer than C at the same time. That's not possible.

It's actually entirely possible. For example it's how Fortran has been traditionally faster than C, by not allowing for aliasing (which is also an unsafe feature) it can give the compiler more room from optimization.

Re: Rust is Software's Salvation

#142

Post by coldtea »

101023810 wrote: post #138

This is a very strange statement. I bet that the compiler can't prove "within-array-bounds" for about 99% of the algorithms in CLRS, but those algorithms are well-written (and have proofs themselves). None of this matters of course: The hipsters (at least publicly) have taken over Rust and are ruining it for everyone. EDIT: Downvoting by an idiot hipster within seconds.

You don't have to "solve the halting problem" to have better heuristics/primitives than C that give a compiler more optimization room. Even Fortran does it, and of course there's tons of room for way bigger "intention defining" features in a language than what Fortran offers.

So nothing strange about the statement, except your hyperbole.

Re: Rust is Software's Salvation

#143

Post by 012810010101 »

coldtea wrote: post #142
101023810 wrote: post #138

This is a very strange statement. I bet that the compiler can't prove "within-array-bounds" for about 99% of the algorithms in CLRS, but those algorithms are well-written (and have proofs themselves). None of this matters of course: The hipsters (at least publicly) have taken over Rust and are ruining it for everyone. EDIT: Downvoting by an idiot hipster within seconds.

You don't have to "solve the halting problem" to have better heuristics/primitives than C that give a compiler more optimization room. Even Fortran does it, and of course there's tons of room for way bigger "intention defining" features in a language than what Fortran offers. So nothing strange about the statement, except your hyperbole.

Of course the "halting problem" was hyperbole. It was in the context of "rust is salvation" and the flood of blog posts showing up here in the last 24 hours.

But valid access proofs for nontrivial programs are hard, so the real benefit (this subthread was originally about the cost of bounds checking, specifically compared to C) remains to be seen.

[The topic of this subthread is difficult to see, since the starter comment has been (quite ridiculously) downvoted into oblivion.]

Re: Rust is Software's Salvation

#144

Post by ZenoArrow »

mmstick wrote: post #119
ZenoArrow wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"I don't think it's description of an issue." It is if it drives potential community members away.

No one's being driven away. Only people who had no intention on trying Rust are complaining about it.

There's plenty of comments about it in the Rust subreddit, coming from people who have tried it.

Look, it's not an issue for all time, there are plans to improve it, I'm just suggesting it as a point of friction right now. If you seriously don't think it's an issue, what would you say are the issues? You won't do yourself any favours if you try to pretend Rust is perfect.

Re: Rust is Software's Salvation

#145

Post by ZenoArrow »

bjz_ wrote: post #108
stcredzero wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years ago it was "concurrency primitives are going to change your life Those, plus the total package of tradeoffs in Golang did for me, in terms of implementing a game server. The whole package really is game changing for what I'm doing. I am somewhat disappointed that we still feel the need to create entirely new toolchains and rewrite everything just to support what should be an incremental improvement. There…

Maybe we should make it de rigeur that people relate their "inventions" with past art? A lot of times, when I point out past art, I get met with instant open hostility from younger devs. Is it any wonder that programming has the attributes of a popular medium, not a field of engineering study? [...] If young coders want to be the future intelligentsia and harbingers of a better kind of programming, they need to foste…

>"That said, I don't mind reinventing the wheel in new ways - every time our wheels get better and better. But perhaps they could get better faster with fewer steps backwards with a little schooling on the foundations of our field."

You may be interested in Graal/Truffle. One of the main aims is to make it a playground for experimenting with programming language design by reducing the work that goes into the underpinnings of these new languages. It's also meant to offer fairly decent performance.

https://medium.com/@octskyward/graal-truffle-134d8f28fb69#.n...

https://github.com/graalvm/truffle/blob/master/README.md

Re: Rust is Software's Salvation

#146

Post by EugeneOZ »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #144
mmstick wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one's being driven away. Only people who had no intention on trying Rust are complaining about it.

There's plenty of comments about it in the Rust subreddit, coming from people who have tried it. Look, it's not an issue for all time, there are plans to improve it, I'm just suggesting it as a point of friction right now. If you seriously don't think it's an issue, what would you say are the issues? You won't do yourself any favours if you try to pretend Rust is perfect.

Borrow checker learning curve is an issue, of course. But not checker itself.

Re: Rust is Software's Salvation

#147

Post by stcredzero »

coldtea wrote: post #137
stcredzero wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That said, I don't mind reinventing the wheel in new ways - every time our wheels get better and better. Not always. Pry debugging Ruby can be pretty awesome but still often leaves a lot to be desired compared to the VisualWorks Smalltalk debugger+environment. Then there's the One Laptop Per Child project. How many developers were trying to recreate things that already existed in Smalltalk? What if they could've free…

> Not always. Pry debugging Ruby can be pretty awesome but still often leaves a lot to be desired compared to the VisualWorks Smalltalk debugger+environment. Then there's the One Laptop Per Child project. How many developers were trying to recreate things that already existed in Smalltalk? How many Smalltalks were not closed source and with commercial IDEs and toolsets?

Squeak. That would've been enough. Smalltalk doesn't have an IDE in the traditional sense. The browser is a very small, thin app on top of the meta level and libraries.

Re: Rust is Software's Salvation

#148

Post by coldtea »

stcredzero wrote: post #147
coldtea wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not always. Pry debugging Ruby can be pretty awesome but still often leaves a lot to be desired compared to the VisualWorks Smalltalk debugger+environment. Then there's the One Laptop Per Child project. How many developers were trying to recreate things that already existed in Smalltalk? How many Smalltalks were not closed source and with commercial IDEs and toolsets?

Squeak. That would've been enough. Smalltalk doesn't have an IDE in the traditional sense. The browser is a very small, thin app on top of the meta level and libraries.

Squeak only got viable a decade or so after the demise of commercial Smalltalks.

Re: Rust is Software's Salvation

#149

Post by pjmlp »

coldtea wrote: post #139
pjmlp wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say it is a matter of quality in computing related degrees. My university did a pretty good job teaching the ways of the past. Sadly things seem to have changed for the worst in the last 20 years.

> My university did a pretty good job teaching the ways of the past. That's because the past then was still modern.

Meaning teaching in the 90's the computing history of programming all the back to the early days.

Those majoring in systems programming had a good glimpse of OSes and programming languages.

Re: Rust is Software's Salvation

#150

Post by ZenoArrow »

EugeneOZ wrote: post #146
ZenoArrow wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of comments about it in the Rust subreddit, coming from people who have tried it. Look, it's not an issue for all time, there are plans to improve it, I'm just suggesting it as a point of friction right now. If you seriously don't think it's an issue, what would you say are the issues? You won't do yourself any favours if you try to pretend Rust is perfect.

Borrow checker learning curve is an issue, of course. But not checker itself.

You do realise you've wasted both my time and your own. If you thought about it from the start, it's obvious that I was referring to the learning curve. All facets of all Turing-complete languages are useful once you've overcome the learning curve. What varies is the length of time needed before you become proficient in using it. For another example...

The learning curve for manual memory management in C is a major issue, but not the principal of manual memory management itself.

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