Hey, I am the author of "what" and am very happy to hear people like this tool I made. :) "what" was my first real attempt at rust, and I love the project very much. That said, it is a hobby project - and so I will likely be a few days responding to all issues and contributions that came from this thread. "what" has already received some great contributions that are major parts of the code base. I would be very happy…
What are your thoughts on Rust so far? What primary language(s) did you come from? I've been planning to learn Rust but haven't made the leap yet because I expect a big time commitment due to the learning curve. I poked around your source code and it was inspiring. Your code looks simple and straightforward compared to some of the other Rust projects I've examined.
My major language in recent years has been javascript (and years before that perl). Rust was a breath of fresh air for me as I did not previously have "access" to system-level functionality.
I very much love the ease with which I can rely on other people's code (feels like home coming from node.js) - even though as mentioned in this thread it does have its downsides (eg. longer compiler times).
The learning curve is indeed challenging, but the tooling is amazing, the compiler has better error messages than I could even have imagined, and the community is incredibly friendly and welcoming. All in all, I'd say it's worth the effort. :)