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Leaving Rust gamedev after 3 years

loglog.games

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Re: Leaving Rust gamedev after 3 years

#161

Post by taylodl »

api wrote: post #6

> Making a fun & interesting games is about rapid prototyping and iteration, Rust's values are everything but that I feel like this is the core of the author's frustration. Rust is a systems language. It's for writing tight fast C-like code but safely and with a much more powerful type system. The facilities you need to do this are somewhat at odds with what you want for rapid iteration. Seems like Rust was the wrong…

I would think a modern systems language such as Rust wouldn't require a systems development methodology from the 1970's. There's no inherent reason you shouldn't be able to rapidly prototype a system and then refactor the prototype into your actual implementation.

Re: Leaving Rust gamedev after 3 years

#162

Post by lawn »

nu11ptr wrote: post #19

As much as I love Rust I sometimes wonder if I'd be more productive in a simpler language. If I wrote it every day I'm not sure that would be true, but as a hobbyist coming back to Rust sometimes takes me a bit to get back in the zone. Also, still not a fan of async, as it is woefully incomplete and fairly complicated in some use cases. That said, I just can't go back to Go with nil pointers and lack of decent enums/…

It doesn't occupy the same space, but the simplicity of Gleam has been very enjoyable to me. It's still quite a young language though, but worth keeping an eye on.

Re: Leaving Rust gamedev after 3 years

#163

Post by droopyEyelids »

int0x29 wrote: post #147
Animats wrote: post #137

That's a good article. He's right about many things. I've been writing a metaverse client in Rust for several years now. Works with Second Life and Open Simulator servers. Here's some video.[1] It's about 45,000 lines of safe Rust. Notes: * There are very few people doing serious 3D game work in Rust. There's Veloren, and my stuff, and maybe a few others. No big, popular titles. I'd expected some AAA title to be writ…

> * There are very few people doing serious 3D game work in Rust. There's Veloren, and my stuff, and maybe a few others. No big, popular titles. I'd expected some AAA title to be written in Rust by now. That hasn't happened, and it's probably not going to happen, for the reasons the author gives. At one point the studio behind the Finals was writing game server code in Rust with an Unreal engine client. Not sure if t…

Backend 3d code?

Re: Leaving Rust gamedev after 3 years

#164

Post by elteto »

gfodor wrote: post #145
elteto wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I copied this exact same snippet and was going to comment the exact same thing. Why choose Rust if you don’t care about maintainability and long term stability? Those are core values of the language! The language choice was wrong from the start. C++ is king for games so if you care more about delivering features and fast prototyping why not go with that? Maybe Rust is not a good language for rapid iteration in the ga…

C++ is king for game engines , but many games opt for languages like Lua or Unreal Blueprints because C++ is to those as Rust is to C++ Personally I like Javascript

Right. Yes, you are correct. I assumed C++ was the language they replaced with Rust because they wanted to write lower level stuff, like their own engines (and they mention doing that).

It makes even less sense to use Rust to replace one of the higher level languages like C#.

Re: Leaving Rust gamedev after 3 years

#165

Post by sesm »

bmitc wrote: post #89
Aurornis wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parts of the Rust community are toxic indeed, but I've been around long enough to recognize the same pattern in communities of other hot programming languages or frameworks in their up-and-coming phase. There's something about the new hot language/framework/paradigm that always attracts the type of people who wrap their identity up in the hot new thing. They take any criticisms of their new favorite thing as criticis…

> Parts of the Rust community are toxic indeed, but I've been around long enough to recognize the same pattern in communities of other hot programming languages or frameworks in their up-and-coming phase. I would say that in general, this type of attitude permeates a lot of software engineering, and even engineering and science as a whole. When I speak with people in other fields, particularly more creative ones, the…

Conversations that people have in science and engineering are more analytical and pessimistic, where they try to clarify and set the boundaries.

This is the opposite of creative and optimistic conversation, where you break boundaries between things to create something new.

The attitude to be analytical in conversations comes from the fact, that software engineers usually do creative part of their work alone, and use communication for analytical part (code review, requirement clarification, etc). For some creative people it's natural to do creative work together, especially in music, so it's easier for them to adopt a creative attitude in conversations.

Re: Leaving Rust gamedev after 3 years

#166

Post by mirekrusin »

mjr00 wrote: post #73

In my experience, fundamentally when you're starting a software project, you need to make a strong up-front decision between two things: 1. I am using technology in order to build this thing. 2. I am building this thing in order to use this technology. Developers often fall in the (2) camp but don't admit it. There's an allure to using the new, sexy tech that will solve all their problems, whether that's Rust, Kubern…

Advice should be - you should do what you like and try to align it with your client (employer) - otherwise you'll burnout rather quickly.

Re: Leaving Rust gamedev after 3 years

#167

Post by cornholio »

HL33tibCe7 wrote: post #3

> The problem you're having is only a problem because you haven't tried hard enough. You just need to read another 50,000 word fasterthanlime essay. Then you'll not have problems any more. > That being said, there is an overwhelming force in the Rust community that when anyone mentions they're having problems with Rust the language on a fundamental level, the answer is "you just don't get it yet, I promise once you g…

Rust is a language with a very high mental cost to use effectively. It requires some fundamental paradigm shifts in the way you write software, hence it's a hard language to be productive in.

For some tasks, the tradeoff is worth it. Some individuals are naturally very inclined to use it.

But for most people, for most tasks, it's simply not the right tool. It's not a general purpose language by any stretch of the imagination.

Re: Leaving Rust gamedev after 3 years

#168

Post by hot_gril »

mirekrusin wrote: post #166
mjr00 wrote: post #73

In my experience, fundamentally when you're starting a software project, you need to make a strong up-front decision between two things: 1. I am using technology in order to build this thing. 2. I am building this thing in order to use this technology. Developers often fall in the (2) camp but don't admit it. There's an allure to using the new, sexy tech that will solve all their problems, whether that's Rust, Kubern…

Advice should be - you should do what you like and try to align it with your client (employer) - otherwise you'll burnout rather quickly.

It's not easy to find an employer that'll agree with your preferences. I chose to find fun and value in the way I collaborate and reach end goals, not the tools. If the tooling in my dept sucks, I just treat it like a challenge and deal with it.

Re: Leaving Rust gamedev after 3 years

#169

Post by [deleted] »

HL33tibCe7 wrote: post #3

> The problem you're having is only a problem because you haven't tried hard enough. You just need to read another 50,000 word fasterthanlime essay. Then you'll not have problems any more. > That being said, there is an overwhelming force in the Rust community that when anyone mentions they're having problems with Rust the language on a fundamental level, the answer is "you just don't get it yet, I promise once you g…

[deleted]

Re: Leaving Rust gamedev after 3 years

#170

Post by citizen_friend »

satvikpendem wrote: post #123
Pxtl wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since every other language now has higher order functions and lexical closures and things like that Lisp isn't as special as it used to be. Now it's mostly just a really ugly version of those languages but with a weird emphasis on recursion and a very fancy macro facility. I find I can move between dynamic languages and Scheme pretty easily.

Lisp is homoiconic which most other languages are not. This makes it useful for certain applications over others.

Yep, but that and the closely related macro system are about the only unique features left. I’ll add “has a spec” and “is reasonably fast” too.
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