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Common *nix commands written in Rust

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Re: Common *nix commands written in Rust

#21

Post by infraredcabbage »

platinumrad wrote: post #17
infraredcabbage wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider this. If a program is written in Python, and becomes popular, it is usually a matter of time before it gets rewritten in, and replaced by an implementation in a faster language. There are fast implementations (C) and there are somewhat safe implementations (Python, Java, ...). If I were to place Rust in this hierarcy - it is both fast AND safe, and there's rarely a good reason to replace it, so you've softwa…

So why not write "fast and safe implementations of popular command line utilities" rather than focusing on the implementation language? If there were a safe and fast implementation of, for example, find in Ada why should it be excluded from this list?

I don't see any reason why people who write these tools in Ada shouldn't add that to the headline as well. People who are interested in Ada would be even more likely to read the article then.

Re: Common *nix commands written in Rust

#23

Post by infraredcabbage »

platinumrad wrote: post #7
ggm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the language is strongly typed and reduces opportunistic threats of mis-application or unexpected data, I'd consider that an upside. If the compiler targets multi-cores and the language helps express implicit parallelism or asynchronous code possibilities which map to multi core, better than the original language, then thats net beneficial too. If the language encourages coding patterns which are extensible or re-…

Okay, so why not say "safer utilities" or "more performant utilities" rather than focusing on the implementation language? If I'm an end user of a safe and performant utility why should I care if it's written in Rust, Go, or OCaml?

Because there are a lot of programmers that read Hacker News and some of them have interests in particular things. That's why you see titles such as "Learn polynomial regression with Tensorflow" or "How do do HFT with Python".

Re: Common *nix commands written in Rust

#24

Post by Hello71 »

johnklos wrote: post #18
infraredcabbage wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider this. If a program is written in Python, and becomes popular, it is usually a matter of time before it gets rewritten in, and replaced by an implementation in a faster language. There are fast implementations (C) and there are somewhat safe implementations (Python, Java, ...). If I were to place Rust in this hierarcy - it is both fast AND safe, and there's rarely a good reason to replace it, so you've softwa…

Except Rust isn't a direct replacement for c. Rust's system requirements are perhaps acceptable for what'll be normal in computers five years from now. We don't need to re-stratify development so that only people with expensive computers with > 4 gigs of memory can compile what they run.

"expensive computers"

"> 4 gigs of memory"

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_fsrp=1&_nkw=computer&_sacat...

by my standards, $5 is not an "expensive computer".

and more to the point, the language has little to do with the compilation memory required. Firefox and Chrome require significantly more memory than that to compile nowadays; they passed the 4 GB mark that could be compiled on a 32-bit machine many years ago, and both Firefox and Chrome were written entirely in C++ at the time. furthermore, you can always enable swap. it'll be slow, but if you can't afford a $5 computer, you take what you can get.

Re: Common *nix commands written in Rust

#25

Post by hu3 »

zlynx wrote: post #20
johnklos wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Rust isn't a direct replacement for c. Rust's system requirements are perhaps acceptable for what'll be normal in computers five years from now. We don't need to re-stratify development so that only people with expensive computers with > 4 gigs of memory can compile what they run.

You're exaggerating for effect, I assume. Rust compile does not require that much RAM. Now, by default the "cargo" build uses all CPU threads, so if you have a 32 core Threadripper then yes, running 64 simultaneous "rustc" compiles will use 6 or 7 gigabytes.

Last I checked Rust needed more than 4GB of RAM to compile itself.

That's one of the reasons it was rejected in OpenBSD: https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=151233345723889&w=2

Re: Common *nix commands written in Rust

#26

Post by monocasa »

mhh__ wrote: post #9
monocasa wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's just that Rust brings a fairly new set of semantics to system code (memory safe, but no GC), and people are pretty excited to rethink large parts of the software stack we all depend on.

That's but rust has been a known quantity for 5(?) years at least now?

Changes in the systems development space take a long time to propagate.

A year or so back I found out that I got passed over for an embedded job because I had a big emphasis for Rust on my side projects and they thought it was a toy GCed language and a weird anachronism to put on there.

Re: Common *nix commands written in Rust

#27

Post by monocasa »

hu3 wrote: post #25
zlynx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're exaggerating for effect, I assume. Rust compile does not require that much RAM. Now, by default the "cargo" build uses all CPU threads, so if you have a 32 core Threadripper then yes, running 64 simultaneous "rustc" compiles will use 6 or 7 gigabytes.

Last I checked Rust needed more than 4GB of RAM to compile itself. That's one of the reasons it was rejected in OpenBSD: https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=151233345723889&w=2

clang needs more than 4GB to compile itself too.

Re: Common *nix commands written in Rust

#28

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #3
platinumrad wrote: post #2

There are sometimes good reasons, usually related to features although sometimes related to performance, to prefer newer utilities like ripgrep over older ones like grep. Implementation language is not one of them.

I came here to ask, thought not outright say, what is it with all the "... in rust" stuff that keeps getting posted. It's starting to feel more like a marketing exercise than anything actually software related (happy to be corrected on this though).

I assume it's just waves of popularity and people getting into particular ecosystems. A few years ago there was a similar wave of writing/rewriting software in go.

Re: Common *nix commands written in Rust

#29

Post by [deleted] »

johnklos wrote: post #18
infraredcabbage wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider this. If a program is written in Python, and becomes popular, it is usually a matter of time before it gets rewritten in, and replaced by an implementation in a faster language. There are fast implementations (C) and there are somewhat safe implementations (Python, Java, ...). If I were to place Rust in this hierarcy - it is both fast AND safe, and there's rarely a good reason to replace it, so you've softwa…

Except Rust isn't a direct replacement for c. Rust's system requirements are perhaps acceptable for what'll be normal in computers five years from now. We don't need to re-stratify development so that only people with expensive computers with > 4 gigs of memory can compile what they run.

[deleted]

Re: Common *nix commands written in Rust

#30

Post by dragonsh »

littlestymaar wrote: post #5
throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to ask, thought not outright say, what is it with all the "... in rust" stuff that keeps getting posted. It's starting to feel more like a marketing exercise than anything actually software related (happy to be corrected on this though).

“marketing” is probably not the right word since there is no money backing it, and it's not a concerted effort either. “Fashion” would fit better I think. Rust has long been something intellectually interesting (solving memory issues found in C and C++, while keeping their low level and with equal performance is quite a feat), but it recently started to become affordable to use (libraries are maturing, there's tons o…

Rust solve memory issues of C/C++ at the cost of simplicity and with convoluted, complicated syntax. It will bring in new class of bugs when it becomes popular enough and when large parts of Firefox are rewritten in it.

I am not sure why some programmers think, complex and convoluted the syntax, the better the language, especially taking rust as an example. Go has been successful in it’s niche as systems programming language because it’s syntax is easy and can fit the brain easily. A similar simple good programming language I see is zig language which makes memory safety as a choice for the programmer to implement rather than forcing on them with complex borrow checker syntax. On top rely of unsafe C library and code to do anything useful. Zig eschews complexity and embraces C with simple syntax and semantics and provide easy tools to build memory safe code and not shoot the foot. But anyways like democracy in programming complicated languages can win due to majority by marketing or in fashion.

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