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Rust Is Hard, Or: The Misery of Mainstream Programming

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Re: Rust Is Hard, Or: The Misery of Mainstream Programming

#391

Post by Dowwie »

HacklesRaised wrote: post #275

Is rusts most loved status simply Stockholm syndrome? I've really tried with rust, and we simply don't get on. I hear all the arguments about CVEs and wonder if rust will reduce the number of these problems simply by disabling the programmers that create them. I understand the draw, I want to love it, but i think I might not be smart enough.

It's not a matter of smarts but grit. Modern society cultivates short attention spans, impatience, and a need for instant gratification. It's really uncomfortable, and costly, for many to spend hundreds of hours cultivating a new skillset. So, many give up shortly after starting to pursue it. However, those who persist and achieve capabilities come to value what those capabilities offer over alternatives.

Re: Rust Is Hard, Or: The Misery of Mainstream Programming

#392

Post by lelanthran »

HacklesRaised wrote: post #296
lelanthran wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a language designed by people who's favourite language is not even pronounceable. Did you think that such a group of people, who place their love for the language above practical things like readability, would come up with a new language that cared about the user-experience[1]? As we see all the time WRT to programming languages, readability is more important than the more abstract stuff. > I hear all the argume…

My CVE comment was very much tongue in cheek.

> My CVE comment was very much tongue in cheek.

I got that, but the point is still very much relevant. If places switched to Rust from C++ (or Go, or C), they'd write less software because there will never be as many people who understand Rust as there are people who understand Go.

If it was at all easy to pick up there'd be a fewer stories from people who tried learning it and abandoned the effort.

I cannot think of any person who reported abandoning Go because it was too hard to learn.

Re: Rust Is Hard, Or: The Misery of Mainstream Programming

#393

Post by blub »

orangetuba wrote: post #263
eternalban wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'…

If the benchmark is "projects that are known for idiomatic C", such as Redis or Sqlite, we know that even they introduce memory corruption errors that lead to vulnerabilities every now and then. You're not better than them.

And yet those C and C++ projects continue to be very popular and successful. :-)

Re: Rust Is Hard, Or: The Misery of Mainstream Programming

#395

Post by coderenegade »

dataangel wrote: post #175
FpUser wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"I don't understand why so many people lately seem to want to use Rust for web domain stuff." >"Rust is the new C++. Let's just stick with that." I write "web domain stuff" in C++ and it is incredibly easy (well for me at least). In C++ I could always use my own styles / paradigms / patterns etc. etc. Not forced to any particular way. And modern C++ is incredibly safe if one wishes. So if it is bad idea to write "we…

Modern C++ isn't really safe. Safe means the compiler catches you, generally C++ compilers don't. Trivial example is iterator invalidation -- even with all warnings and errors on compilers don't catch it.

So we should all be using Spark Ada?

Safety isn't an all or nothing thing, and in most cases, rigorous safety comes with tradeoffs. In some applications those tradeoffs are worth it, and in others they're not. A small project probably doesn't need to be provably correct, because it's easy enough to analyze it, and you aren't gaining much if the more rigorous language is unwieldy (they often are); similarly, a large enterprise project is harder to analyze, and has larger costs if there are CVEs, so a safer language is probably a good fit. Note that this doesn't necessarily mean rust, though -- garbage collected languages sit here, too. Rust sits in the niche of "big enough and / or critical enough to justify rigorous safety", and "high performance really matters".

Re: Rust Is Hard, Or: The Misery of Mainstream Programming

#396

Post by blub »

conradludgate wrote: post #290
HacklesRaised wrote: post #275

Is rusts most loved status simply Stockholm syndrome? I've really tried with rust, and we simply don't get on. I hear all the arguments about CVEs and wonder if rust will reduce the number of these problems simply by disabling the programmers that create them. I understand the draw, I want to love it, but i think I might not be smart enough.

Definitely not. I've been a full time rust developer for a long time now. Whenever I need to write some C# or Go or JS I honestly feel quite blind with a hand tied behind my back. I don't have the expressiveness of rusts type system and I don't have the safety of the strong compiler so I have to test my code a lot more thoroughly to be confident. With rust I'm pretty confident in my code from the start

How you feel relates to you and your preferences and doesn't really say anything about Rust versus let's say Go.

Is your software more performant and does this translate to additional customers or reduced costs? Is your software more stable and does this result in reduced support costs or happier customers?

Testing effort is likewise not a decisive matter. In fact it's quite likely that what one wins time-wise on the testing side is lost on the development side.

Re: Rust Is Hard, Or: The Misery of Mainstream Programming

#397

Post by kaba0 »

jstx1 wrote: post #384
Omin wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This selection effect cannot explain Rust's standing relative to other new languages and neither can it explain why Rust's popularity (as measured by "most loved") increases over time as more and more companies are using it. Here's the history of Rust's "most loved" percentage going back to 2015 Year - Most Loved Pct. - Rank 2015 - 73.8% - 3 2016 - 79.1% - 1 2017 - 73.1% - 1 2018 - 78.9% - 1 2019 - 83.5% - 1 2020 - 8…

I think that's consistent with my line of thinking - if in 2015 some people tried it and decided that it's not for them, they drop off from the sample and % loved goes up in following years. Not claiming that this explains the entire increase in the percentage (I have no way of knowing) but I don't think this data contradicts my reasoning either.

How is it different than in case of every other language? Also, why not another newer language tops the list?

Re: Rust Is Hard, Or: The Misery of Mainstream Programming

#398

Post by blub »

whazor wrote: post #386
HacklesRaised wrote: post #275

Is rusts most loved status simply Stockholm syndrome? I've really tried with rust, and we simply don't get on. I hear all the arguments about CVEs and wonder if rust will reduce the number of these problems simply by disabling the programmers that create them. I understand the draw, I want to love it, but i think I might not be smart enough.

Rust makes it easier and faster to create certain classes of applications, specifically applications that originally would be written in C and C++. Things that are hard in Rust, are even harder in C and C++. So Rust is liberating and 'rewriting' complicated applications can be satisfying because you can move faster. For me personally I am playing with Wayland and display streaming and it is very satisfactory so far t…

Where's the proof that Rust makes it easier and faster to create applications? In my experience it's harder and slower compared to other languages like Go and even C++, but you get memory-safety in return while keeping a very good runtime performance profile.

Re: Rust Is Hard, Or: The Misery of Mainstream Programming

#399

Post by qznc »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #381
Nokinside wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO it would be good for Rust to become popular niche/specialist language for systems programming. Currently Rust is not as complete or well defined as Ada/SPARK or MISRA C/C++ combined with commercial analyzers (Astree for example). At the same time Rust is "too sound and rigorous" for mainstream programmers. Rust advocates are in the losing battle of of forcing mainstream to adopt "it does not compile unless compu…

I for one as someone who programmed professionally in both Ocaml and Ada still don’t see where Rust is supposed to fit. If I was doing something high level, I would probably use Ocaml which has nicer features. If I wanted to write safe code, Ada offers a better experience with the availability of SPARK for parts I would probably end up wanting to prove. If I just want to write concurrent code with the certainty I cou…

I think Rust has a good chance to take away market share from Ada and Ocaml. Its eco system (packages, documentation) is more comprehensive already thanks to its broader appeal and being in fashion. I don’t see why stronger verification should not appear at some point. Progress and need is there.

Re: Rust Is Hard, Or: The Misery of Mainstream Programming

#400

Post by tucnak »

adeon wrote: post #10

I wish there was a Rust-like programming language that was just a little bit higher level than Rust. I like Rust's wide ecosystem with high quality packages, the nice type system, traits, the idea that my code generally runs pretty fast even if I'm being lazy about writing good code, and my code usually working correctly if it compiles. I care about speed and correctness but Rust makes me also care about ownership an…

Elixir?
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