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#[you_can::turn_off_the_borrow_checker]

docs.rs

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Re: #[you_can::turn_off_the_borrow_checker]

#31

Post by V_Terranova_Jr »

ncmncm wrote: post #17
nynx wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost every sentence in this comment is wrong. 1. The compiler has been speeding up a lot, it’s about as fast as C++ on large projects. 2. The borrow checker makes Rust usable by beginners. Imagine writing complex pointer code without it. In rust, a beginner can do that safely. 3. Rust is picking up a lot of steam. It’s getting adopted in a bunch of different industries. Rest assured, it’s not going to fail at this…

Everyone was way more confident about the future of Ada, and with better reasons. If you imagine the borrow checker does not drive away a large majority of prospective users, you live in a dream world. If you imagine the still-slow compiler does not drive away users, you live in a dream world. Wishful thinking is always a poor substitute for corrective action.

> Everyone was way more confident about the future of Ada, and with better reasons.

Is Ada really good support for your argument? Ada's heyday was well prior to the ubiquity of the Internet, had no focus on ergonomics, etc. Its initial adoption target was far more niche than Rust aims to be. I agree with you that there is a certain window in which to achieve relevancy, and that probably has much to do with why newer Ada versions haven't really achieved critical mass. On the other hand, Rust is being used in places from desktop software utilities (e.g., ripgrep) to large internal SaaS codebases. The field of potential Rust developers is far richer than I think Ada ever had.

Re: #[you_can::turn_off_the_borrow_checker]

#32

Post by marginalia_nu »

ncmncm wrote: post #30
marginalia_nu wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is definitely new PHP being written, COBOL is finally beginning to decline, but it will probably be around for quite some time still. I wouldn't worry at all about what the adoption graph looks like. The only thing that matters is whether the language is worth adopting.

There have been many, many languages worth adopting. We don't use those because they were not, in the end, adopted enough .

It's not enough to merely be better than the previous languages, but you must be so much better that it outweighs the cost of adopting a new language (which is steep).

It's why we are still on QWERTY despite DVORAK being a tiny bit better. For most typists it doesn't matter, they will never make up the time spent learning DVORAK with the time saved typing DVORAK.

The same with programming languages. Most new programming languages aren't that much better than the old ones. Maybe they fix one or two problems, but at the same time, they're less mature and critically, who knows if they will be around in 20-30 years. C will be around in 30 years, C++ too, PHP will, Java certainly. Rust, honestly, I dunno. Could go either way, and it's not because people aren't adopting it fast enough that I'm hesitating. When Rust has been around longer, I will be more confident that it will stay around, and then I may consider using it.

Re: #[you_can::turn_off_the_borrow_checker]

#33

Post by ncmncm »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #32
ncmncm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been many, many languages worth adopting. We don't use those because they were not, in the end, adopted enough .

It's not enough to merely be better than the previous languages, but you must be so much better that it outweighs the cost of adopting a new language (which is steep). It's why we are still on QWERTY despite DVORAK being a tiny bit better. For most typists it doesn't matter, they will never make up the time spent learning DVORAK with the time saved typing DVORAK. The same with programming languages. Most new programm…

Absolutely, being better on one or more axes is only table stakes. An essential prerequisite to the miracle, besides, is wide adoption, because without, why would anybody put in the time to get proficient? You have only a short time to get there. With too-slow adoption, you miss the window.

But we are already off in the weeds. Why argue that slow adoption might suffice, instead of doing everything needed to drive up adoption? Would it be so bad to do a thing that might turn out not to have been obviously necessary? Hype only goes so far, and has gone there already.

To me the clearest indication that any language will fizzle is when its boosters insist it doesn't need to do anything not to.

Re: #[you_can::turn_off_the_borrow_checker]

#34

Post by ncmncm »

V_Terranova_Jr wrote: post #31
ncmncm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone was way more confident about the future of Ada, and with better reasons. If you imagine the borrow checker does not drive away a large majority of prospective users, you live in a dream world. If you imagine the still-slow compiler does not drive away users, you live in a dream world. Wishful thinking is always a poor substitute for corrective action.

> Everyone was way more confident about the future of Ada, and with better reasons. Is Ada really good support for your argument? Ada's heyday was well prior to the ubiquity of the Internet, had no focus on ergonomics, etc. Its initial adoption target was far more niche than Rust aims to be. I agree with you that there is a certain window in which to achieve relevancy, and that probably has much to do with why newer…

Ada had literally billions of dollars in contracts backing it, a detailed specification, multiple industrial-grade implementations, tooling companies betting livelihoods on it, and university engineering programs teaching it. How many of those does Rust have? Any? Ada fizzled.

I have not needed to know of any important programs coded in Rust in general use. Ripgrep does not qualify. Alacritty does not qualify. (Haskell has, anyway, Pandoc and Git-annex.) I guess fragments of Firefox are coded in it. I like that Firefox is less crashy than a decade ago, but I doubt Rust is responsible: I think sandboxing gets that credit.

It is possible that Rust could become important someday, but only if things are done to make it so, most particularly acting not to drive away, for readily fixable reasons, a large majority of people who try it out for the first time.

Re: #[you_can::turn_off_the_borrow_checker]

#35

Post by ncmncm »

V_Terranova_Jr wrote: post #27
ncmncm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly you misunderstood: more people pick up C++ for production use every week than the total employed today coding Rust. That will be true next year, too. More are employed coding Ada than Rust. More code Erlang than Rust. More code Forth than Rust. Rust is not "used widely" by any defensible definition. It still seems possible that Rust could , someday, come to be used widely, beyond the HN echo chamber, but on…

> More are employed coding Ada than Rust. > More code Forth than Rust Not trying to be a dick, but do you have any evidence you can point to for these claims? I find them to be surprising and unlikely.

You are welcome to offer your own selection of old, niche languages used more, industrially, than Rust.

But, you do know that Postscript is a Forth, right?

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