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Why AWS loves Rust, and how we’d like to help

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Re: Why AWS loves Rust, and how we’d like to help

#241

Post by dhagz »

ngrilly wrote: post #130
adkadskhj wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup - it drew me in as a Go programmer, entirely replacing my Go stack with Rust. It offers me so many of the joys of Go with more power. Some negatives too of course, but a big boon for me in learning Rust was realizing i didn't always have to reach for the biggest tool. Sometimes a simple Clone or [A]rc was perfectly okay, especially when comparing it to Go - my benchmark. Rust became as developer efficient for me…

I mostly use Go. But I've been keeping an eye on Rust because I like the language expressiveness, the safety provided by the stronger type system, the smoother integration with C calling conventions, the generics, the error handling. But I'm hesitant to switch to it because it feels like the learning curve is steeper in Rust than Go, and that's important for my team where we want to be able to onboard new engineers q…

The learning curve is very, very steep. Worth it, in my opinion. I think, though, you can become productive in Rust after a week or two. Go is great because you can grok it after a couple of days - you'll have most of the main concepts of the language down pretty well. I feel like I'm able to "bend the spoon" every day when I sit down to write Go, and I've only just barely been writing it for a year.

Rust? I haven't even made it to the Oracle yet and I've been writing it (granted, in my spare time) for the same amount of time.

Re: Why AWS loves Rust, and how we’d like to help

#242

Post by est31 »

TheDong wrote: post #152
est31 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome is "on track"? Last I remember they had a document explaining why it's not a good idea for them. I disagree with it, and would very much wish for Chrome to ship Rust, but they don't seem to be interested for now.

They're referring to this[0] I believe, which is not glowing, but does seem mildly optimistic. Specifically: > For now, Chrome investment in Rust will remain a background investigation (mostly directed towards prototyping these tools and techniques). If we become convinced this sort of interoperability is possible, we’ll revisit widespread use of Rust in Chrome [0]: https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/mem…

Yes that's the same document I refer to as well. So nothing has changed. A "mildly optimistic" rejection is a rejection of Rust nonetheless. Rust is definitely not "on track" of being adopted in Chromium. For that you'd need more. Right now it's rather a "we are interested, maybe we'll add it". Also note that Chromium engineers also built some languages themselves that solve some of the same problems that Rust solves: https://github.com/google/wuffs

Re: Why AWS loves Rust, and how we’d like to help

#243

Post by Corrado »

ufmace wrote: post #43

If they really want to help, the most obvious first step would seem to be to formally adopt and throw some full-time resources at the Rusoto AWS library set for Rust. It's pretty usable right now, but would certainly benefit from the level of testing, helper methods, and language-specific additions that the officially supported AWS libs have.

I work with AWS quite regularly and this is one of reasons I don't play with Rust more. If we had an "official" Rust AWS SDK I would probably be building things with it.

Re: Why AWS loves Rust, and how we’d like to help

#244

Post by _msw_ »

steveklabnik wrote: post #24
kortilla wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has lived through hype cycles, big companies can pull the rug just as quickly on these investments as they’ve made them. While this does indicate a more serious interest, it’s not nearly the safety net you think. To the contrary, a bunch of FAANG driven contributions tend to make projects focused too much on particular use cases. Go’s clusterfuck of package management is entirely because Google doesn’t…

> a bunch of FAANG driven contributions tend to make projects focused too much on particular use cases This is one of the challenges we have, as a project, in this next phase of its life: make sure that we are helping organizations achieve their goals, while not allowing it to be totally directed by them. Rust governance is set up to be resilient to takeovers by any one organization, but we're now playing with some o…

From my perspective, the size of the companies has little to do with the relative risk of outcomes that are not the best for the common good. I've seen folks at small companies try to control or unduly influence open-source software, and I've seen folks that work at large companies do it too.

At the end of the day, I think it comes down to the actions of people directly involved in a community, and the culture that they collectively cultivate. I'm optimistic that being intentional in this makes for a very resilient project and community.

Re: Why AWS loves Rust, and how we’d like to help

#245

Post by ThinkBeat »

Probably an unpopular opinion but I am not very excited by this.

Getting funding and support is great, but the needs of the many are very different than the needs of AWS and Facebook.

In my opinion we see this a lot in Linux as well. What Google wants has almost nothing to do with what I need. (I said almost).

I think it should gestate a while in a less FAANGy environment.

Re: Why AWS loves Rust, and how we’d like to help

#246

Post by didibus »

gibolt wrote: post #84
smarx007 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I always hoped Java would make a comeback In order to make a comeback, Java first needs to fall from the TOP 3 languages used by professional programmers in the world. https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#most-popular-...

These insights are a snapshot, not a trend line. Java can be in rapid decline and still be at the top of the list. Changing acceleration, not position, is how you make a comeback. Java is currently losing Android devs to Kotlin. That could cause a precipitous drop in direct usage in the coming years.

True, but I don't think Java is declining, I just think Python and JavaScript grew beyond Java. But I really doubt that the use of JavaScript and Python that took on replaced the use of Java, I think it's just new use cases. I haven't looked at the data, but ya, I'd doubt Java is declining.

P.S.: Also I say Java, but I mean JVM, I club all JVM languages together, since that's more what I care about, is the strength of the Java ecosystem.

Re: Why AWS loves Rust, and how we’d like to help

#248

Post by didibus »

steveklabnik wrote: post #133
Thaxll wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java is nowhere close losing the #1/2 spot in programming language, it's just everywhere.

I agree that Java is not going anywhere, but I could absolutely see a world where JavaScript and Python are number one and two.

Ya, but the ranking don't really matter, the usage does. It's possible Java grew year over year and yet lost rank.

Re: Why AWS loves Rust, and how we’d like to help

#249

Post by est31 »

qppo wrote: post #183
germansm wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the same way Rust appears in ... (5,1% - 4.8% Professional Developers). The big players are looking for commercial long term safety about the used tools, platforms, programming languages and their ecosystems. After that, the technical discussion will take place.

I'm not sure who "the big players" are in your book but the largest software engineering organizations in the world are already using Rust. The post is about one of them committing their resources to the project itself. Caution doesn't make money, it just prevents losing as much money. When it comes to technology if you're waiting for everyone else to validate an idea, you're too late.

> the largest software engineering organizations in the world are already using Rust.

That doesn't mean much because it is true for probably most serious technologies out there. Most of those organizations also have a perl script somewhere. Does that mean their core products are written in perl? Nope.

That being said, Rust is certainly successful and seeing growing adoption.

Re: Why AWS loves Rust, and how we’d like to help

#250

Post by steveklabnik »

didibus wrote: post #248
steveklabnik wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that Java is not going anywhere, but I could absolutely see a world where JavaScript and Python are number one and two.

Ya, but the ranking don't really matter, the usage does. It's possible Java grew year over year and yet lost rank.

I certainly agree that language rankings don’t really matter. In very broad strokes, “used everywhere,” “used many places,” “used some places,” “pretty niche,” “academic only,” these kinds of things are more useful than arguing which is 5 vs 6.
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