Implications of Rewriting a Browser Component in Rust

Post by Thaxll » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 4:55 PM UTC

millstone wrote: post #35

rkangel wrote: post #4

It's nice to see a balanced, real world, case study including 'these things are fixed by Rust', 'these are problems that don't occur in idiomatic Rust', and 'these are problems that Rust can't help you with'. I'm a big fan of Rust, but the one sided 'Rust makes all the problems go away' articles don't provide any value.

These are all ways that Rust is neutral or better. Were there any ways that Rust was worse? For example, did the previous code use value-type templates? If so how was their absence worked around in the new code?

Post by pjmlp » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 4:58 PM UTC

ianlevesque wrote: post #40

mrath wrote: post #2

I primarily use Java for my job. Security and memory related features of Rust are not an advantage compared to Java. But I like rust because it feels modern and produces efficient standalone binaries. Most of my hobby projects are in Rust now. But I would not rewrite any of my work projects in Rust even though they require ultimate performance. That would be a maintenance burden. It is great to see people rewriting i…

I use Java constantly in my job and recently tried rewriting a math & memory heavy component in rust to see what performance gains there might be. Surprisingly (to me) the naive rust version was ~15% slower than Java. There’s probably room for more rust optimization but it was interesting that “efficient standalone binaries” doesn’t automatically mean faster too when competing with HotSpot.

Post by steveklabnik » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 4:59 PM UTC

blub wrote: post #38

sciurus wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Abstraction without overhead" is explicitly a goal of Rust. https://blog.rust-lang.org/2015/05/11/traits.html

From your link: "C++ implementations obey the zero-overhead principle: What you don't use, you don't pay for". In Rust you pay for e.g. bounds checking or integer overflow handling or optionals. But I don't understand why everyone's getting so defensive about this, since it's the only way (static verification and proofs aside) to get the desired safety characteristics...

Post by pjmlp » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 4:59 PM UTC

woah wrote: post #24

latencyloser wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I write Java daily, I haven't seen one in a production environment in... at least recent memory. Most common NPEs I've seen can be resolved by doing two things: 1) for returning a single, nullable value, wrap it in Optional. 2) Never return null collections, always default to an empty collection instead. More nuanced ones can often be caught by using all args constructors and requiring the constructor values with Obj…

Rust basically just enforces the things you mention

Post by QuercusMax » Thu, Feb 28, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

ianlevesque wrote: post #40

mrath wrote: post #2

I primarily use Java for my job. Security and memory related features of Rust are not an advantage compared to Java. But I like rust because it feels modern and produces efficient standalone binaries. Most of my hobby projects are in Rust now. But I would not rewrite any of my work projects in Rust even though they require ultimate performance. That would be a maintenance burden. It is great to see people rewriting i…

I use Java constantly in my job and recently tried rewriting a math & memory heavy component in rust to see what performance gains there might be. Surprisingly (to me) the naive rust version was ~15% slower than Java. There’s probably room for more rust optimization but it was interesting that “efficient standalone binaries” doesn’t automatically mean faster too when competing with HotSpot.