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Rust--: Rust without the borrow checker

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Re: Rust--: Rust without the borrow checker

#31

Post by mentalgear »

jokoon wrote: post #29

To me it feels like rust is barely readable sometimes. When I read some rust cost, I am often incapable to guess what it does, so it does not feel intuitive. I wish they made something simpler. At least C and C++ have a low barrier of entry and any beginner can write code. I don't think the borrow checker forced rust to be such a complicated language.

I can just second that. Maybe someone (or some LLM) can write a nice superset of Rust that is more readable - so the barrier of entry drops significantly and we can all write better, more efficient and memory-safe code!

Re: Rust--: Rust without the borrow checker

#32

Post by tialaramex »

gspr wrote: post #11

Tangentially related: the opposite, Rust's borrow checker sans the compiler, is actually very useful. As far as I understand, the borrow checker is a significant part of the work of writing a Rust compiler. Therefore, having the official borrow checker available as a standalone program can make alternative compilers (e.g. for exotic hardware) feasible faster, because they won't need a borrow checker of their own from…

Why would this matter? The borrowck is (a) not needed during bring-up because as its name suggests it is merely a check, so going without it just means you can write nonsense and then unbounded undefined behaviour results, but (b) written entirely in Rust so you can just compile it with the rest of this "exotic hardware" Rust compiler you've built.

Re: Rust--: Rust without the borrow checker

#33

Post by torginus »

jokoon wrote: post #29

To me it feels like rust is barely readable sometimes. When I read some rust cost, I am often incapable to guess what it does, so it does not feel intuitive. I wish they made something simpler. At least C and C++ have a low barrier of entry and any beginner can write code. I don't think the borrow checker forced rust to be such a complicated language.

I feel exactly the same - C++ might be a much more complex and arcane language when you consider its entire feature set, and all the syntactic machinery (I figured out by looking at STL or Boost code, just how much of C++ I don't know or understand), you can choose to not engage with most of the language. Hell, even stuff like unique_ptr is optional when you're just starting out.

But with Rust, you have to understand almost all of the language very intimately to be a productive programmer, and Rust is not that great at hiding complexity, as in fairly innocious decisions often have far-reaching consequences down the line.

Re: Rust--: Rust without the borrow checker

#34

Post by withinboredom »

0xdeafbeef wrote: post #20
w4rh4wk5 wrote: post #19

I am wondering whether this would actually be a helpful compile option in upstream rustc for quick prototyping. I don't want prod code to use this, but if I want to try things out during development, this could substantially shorten the dev cycle.

What the point, though? You will get compiling code, but later you would need to reachitecture code to avoid violating rust rules.

Sometimes, you just need to know if an idea will even work or what it would look like. If you have to refactor half the codebase (true story for me once), it makes the change a much harder sell without showing some benefits. IE, it keeps you from discovering better optimizations because you have to pay the costs upfront.

Re: Rust--: Rust without the borrow checker

#35

Post by sesm »

jokoon wrote: post #29

To me it feels like rust is barely readable sometimes. When I read some rust cost, I am often incapable to guess what it does, so it does not feel intuitive. I wish they made something simpler. At least C and C++ have a low barrier of entry and any beginner can write code. I don't think the borrow checker forced rust to be such a complicated language.

C++ doesn't have low barrier of entry, I almost quit programming as a teen because of C++.

Re: Rust--: Rust without the borrow checker

#36

Post by lpcvoid »

oskarbh7 wrote: post #18
user3939382 wrote: post #15

Rust- is you use C with ring buffers. If you think you need dynamic memory allocation your program is underspecified.

How does "zero dynamic allocation" work in practice for something like a text editor IE. vscode or other apps that let users open arbitrary files?

Just impose a maximum buffer size ;)

Re: Rust--: Rust without the borrow checker

#37

Post by tialaramex »

dataflow wrote: post #25

This can't possibly be guaranteed to work just by disabling the checker, can it? If Rust optimizes based on borrow-checker assumptions (which I understand it can and does) then wouldn't violating them be UB, unless you also mess with the compiler to disable those optimizations?

If you write correct Rust code it'll work, the borrowck is just that, a check, if the teacher doesn't check your homework where you wrote that 10 + 5 = 15 it's still correct. If you write incorrect code where you break Rust's borrowing rules it'll have unbounded Undefined Behaviour, unlike the actual Rust where that'd be an error this thing will just give you broken garbage, exactly like a C++ compiler.

Evidently millions of people want broken garbage, Herb Sutter even wrote a piece celebrating how many more C++ programmers and projects there were last year, churning out yet more broken garbage, it's a metaphor for 2025 I guess.

Re: Rust--: Rust without the borrow checker

#38

Post by torginus »

sesm wrote: post #35
jokoon wrote: post #29

To me it feels like rust is barely readable sometimes. When I read some rust cost, I am often incapable to guess what it does, so it does not feel intuitive. I wish they made something simpler. At least C and C++ have a low barrier of entry and any beginner can write code. I don't think the borrow checker forced rust to be such a complicated language.

C++ doesn't have low barrier of entry, I almost quit programming as a teen because of C++.

Imo the worst thing about starting out with C++ (which is much better with Rust), is the lack of credible package management/build system that allows you to just install packages.

This used to be even more true previously than today. Nowadays, there's stuff like vcpkg, and tons of resources, but I still wouldn't call it straightforward compared to something like nuget or cargo.

It tooke me more time to figure out CMake than entire other programming languages.

Re: Rust--: Rust without the borrow checker

#39

Post by mrits »

torginus wrote: post #33
jokoon wrote: post #29

To me it feels like rust is barely readable sometimes. When I read some rust cost, I am often incapable to guess what it does, so it does not feel intuitive. I wish they made something simpler. At least C and C++ have a low barrier of entry and any beginner can write code. I don't think the borrow checker forced rust to be such a complicated language.

I feel exactly the same - C++ might be a much more complex and arcane language when you consider its entire feature set, and all the syntactic machinery (I figured out by looking at STL or Boost code, just how much of C++ I don't know or understand), you can choose to not engage with most of the language. Hell, even stuff like unique_ptr is optional when you're just starting out. But with Rust, you have to understand…

I've shipped a lot of Rust software without the understanding or even attempting to learn a lot of the language. There is plenty of things in core libraries around traits that I have no idea how they work or really care.

Re: Rust--: Rust without the borrow checker

#40

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

For everyone unaware, this repo is a meme:

https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1q0kvn1/corroded_upda...

As a follow on to the corroded meme crate:

https://github.com/buyukakyuz/corroded

> What Is This

> The rust compiler thinks it knows better than you. It won't let you have two pointers to the same thing. It treats you like a mass of incompetence that can't be trusted with a pointer.

> We fix that.

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