Rust Is Hard, Or: The Misery of Mainstream Programming

Post by alkonaut » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 7:12 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #21

the_duke wrote: post #12

Rust does not have to be this hard. Most of the pain here come from the unholy trifactor: combining async, lifetimes and dynamic dispatch with trait object closures; which is indeed very awkward in practice. Async support is incredibly half-baked. It was released as an MVP, but that MVP has not improved notably in almost three years. There are lots of ideas, some progress on the fundamental language features required…

> If you can avoid async I would recommend doing so. The problem is that the entire ecosystem has completely shifted to async. There are almost no active / popular libraries related to network IO that haven't switched over. Yes. I've been complaining about async contamination for some time. I'm writing heavily threaded code, with threads running at different priorities, and libraries which want async get in the way.…

Post by orangetuba » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 7:12 AM UTC

eternalban wrote: post #94

jeroenhd wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust isn't hard for the things you try to solve in Rust. The author compares Rust code with Go code. Those two languages serve entirely different purposes, with entirely different mechanisms behind it. Go does what the author does with ease because the runtime fixes all the complicated parts for you. You tell Go what you want and it'll try to solve all the memory management/threading/memory safety issues for you, usu…

> I think the difficulty in Rust lies in that it will enforce correctness. Competing languages are less strict about that, especially when it comes to threading. Enforcing correctness at compile time is not the only way to insure correctness. Some do enjoy solving language puzzles (so choose Rust) and some prefer thinking before coding and prefer solving design puzzles. I personally prefer that latter, as the 'hard'…

Post by lelanthran » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 7:15 AM UTC

SquibblesRedux wrote: post #210

the_duke wrote: post #12

Rust does not have to be this hard. Most of the pain here come from the unholy trifactor: combining async, lifetimes and dynamic dispatch with trait object closures; which is indeed very awkward in practice. Async support is incredibly half-baked. It was released as an MVP, but that MVP has not improved notably in almost three years. There are lots of ideas, some progress on the fundamental language features required…

I do wish async would go away and never come back -- in every language. Some days I long for the NMI: non-maskable interrupt. I have been coding since the late 70s -- the latter half of the last century. After all I have seen, async feels wrong.

   1. var logResults = Background writeLogServiceStarted()  // Sent to different machine
   2. var authoResults = Background performAuthorisation()  // Perform by 3rd party
   3. var userSettings = Background getUserSettings(request.currentUser) // Stored in DB
   4. var results = Background executeQuery(request.query, authoResults) // Different DB
   5. var response = Background generateResponse(results, userSettings)
   6. wait (logResults, response)
   7. transmitResponse (response)

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 7:17 AM UTC

mikojan wrote: post #260

ThePhysicist wrote: post #250

Just got started with Rust and yeah, my biggest pain point so far were lifetimes and async code. I finally replaced tokio with multithreaded blocking code, which seems to be much simpler and more familiar. The problem with async was that some of the libraries I needed (e.g. for QUIC) didn't support it, so you had an unholy mixture of blocking and non-blocking code. Coming from a C++ background I appreciate Rust's nov…

I've successfully replaced tokio with the lower-level mio in one such case. After all threads and async serve different purposes: Threads when you're computing a lot, async when you're waiting a lot, no?

Post by blub » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 7:20 AM UTC

adastra22 wrote: post #247

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoy Rust, but it's not that simple. It really is more work to accomplish certain tasks in Rust than many other languages even when what you're doing is safe. The narrative that "Rust isn't hard" is getting tiresome, and I say this as someone who writes a lot of Rust. Let's be honest that Rust can be harder than many other programming languages in many ways, but those of us who use it believe the upsides and trade…

> Pretending Rust is easy just sets beginners up for disappointment when they get into Rust and realize it wasn't what they were sold. Or worse, they start doubting themselves when they encounter the hard parts because Rust fans were busy insisting it's all easy. You could be describing me. I recently convinced my boss to let me write a server in Rust for the safety, speed, etc. After being two weeks overdue, I threw…