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Moving from TypeScript to Rust / WebAssembly

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Re: Moving from TypeScript to Rust / WebAssembly

#411

Post by blandflakes »

treis wrote: post #355
pjmlp wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.NET and Java have enough batteries, 20 years of libraries solving every problem, several expressive languages available, alongside AOT/JIT compilers.

.NET has the problem if being a MS product. It's only relatively recently that they've decided to be fully cross platform and open source. I'm not sure if it's all the way there yet, but it could be a viable option. Java is fine as a programming language. Java as a web app more or less means Spring. And Spring means XML files and annotations which come with their own problems. Kind of an out of the pan and into the f…

You can get away without using Spring and do quite fine, but there's definitely a risk that if you invest in the JVM ecosystem you'll get hired to work on Spring.

(alternatives like Vert.x, the less-annotation-heavy quarkus, etc).

For Java web dev I actually like Kotlin better - ktor is pretty nice.

Re: Moving from TypeScript to Rust / WebAssembly

#412

Post by wtetzner »

fluffything wrote: post #235
sweeneyrod wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what ways is Rust more pragmatic than OCaml?

Does not really require you to drop to a lower-level language for performance, unless you really need to use assembly for something. OCaml is great for the application level stuff, and also performs quite well in general. But for building fundamental parts of the stack in which perf is important (like the multi-threading runtime, the garbage collector, etc.) you need to drop down to C++, C, or Rust. OCaml is definite…

> OCaml is definitely much nicer to use than C and C++. But I don't find it that much nicer to use than Rust TBH.

I find OCaml quite a bit nicer to use than Rust, though in a lot of ways that's due to my preference for structuring code using modules and functors.

However, due to Cargo and the fact that Rust has good Windows support, I end up reaching for Rust much more often than I do for OCaml.

Re: Moving from TypeScript to Rust / WebAssembly

#413

Post by gen220 »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #400
gen220 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is, IMO, one of the most underrated aspects of the monorepo, that has such a valuable impact over time. It only takes a handful of extremely passionate engineers (and I really mean a handful, like less that 2% of engineers in an org) to raise the quality-floor of the entire codebase.

For sanity, sustainability and fairness I would rather that read It only takes a handful of extremely passionate engineers > It only takes a handful of paid engineers, full time assigned to the task

Anecdotally (I don't work at Google, and this might not apply there because it's such a large company): At the monorepo companies I've worked at, of the 2% passionate I mentioned, maybe half have naturally gravitated towards working FT on the infra teams, the other half make very occasional but astronomical contributions, while working full-time on an actual product.

What I mean to say is that with a monorepo, you leave the door open to essentially passion-driven contributions made by the other half of that 2%. In non-monorepo environments, the barrier to uniform adoption is too high for someone that isn't full-time assigned to the task to justify.

Some people are genuinely passionate about this stuff, and want to take on the task of migrating the entire code base, because it's a fun challenge and it'll improve their day-to-day work every day for the remainder of their employment. They're very rare, but they do exist, and with a monorepo those people are better-equipped to drag the company forward.

Re: Moving from TypeScript to Rust / WebAssembly

#414

Post by cs702 »

eigenspace wrote: post #389
cs702 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just packages and repos, but also installed base, developers, forums, discussions, corporate backers, etc. Otherwise, I agree that not all domains are well covered by any language :-)

Something that I think is worth discussing is that julia has far more package developers per user than Python. That may seem like a weird thing to prop up, it seems to just suggest that Julia users more often find themselves needing to implement something themselves rather than use a pre-existing library, and that's definitely true. However, Julia also makes the experience of growing from a package user to a package…

Great points. Agree with all of them.

Interestingly, I see the same trends with Rust -- high ratio of packages to users (already ~43K crates, despite having only 3% share of Stack Overflow last year), easy packaging (`cargo publish`), and high composability (e.g., via traits, type parameters, etc.).

An obvious question is, why does Rust have 10x more packages than Julia already, and almost a fifth as many as Python? I think it's because from day one Rust has appealed to a broader group of developers (anyone seeking better performance and/or concurrency, with memory safety and modern language features like algebraic data types, will consider Rust). Julia, in contrast, has always targeted the scientific computing community, which contains a much smaller group of developers who seem mostly content with existing tools.

Re: Moving from TypeScript to Rust / WebAssembly

#416

Post by steveklabnik »

cs702 wrote: post #414
eigenspace wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that I think is worth discussing is that julia has far more package developers per user than Python. That may seem like a weird thing to prop up, it seems to just suggest that Julia users more often find themselves needing to implement something themselves rather than use a pre-existing library, and that's definitely true. However, Julia also makes the experience of growing from a package user to a package…

Great points. Agree with all of them. Interestingly, I see the same trends with Rust -- high ratio of packages to users (already ~43K crates, despite having only 3% share of Stack Overflow last year), easy packaging (`cargo publish`), and high composability (e.g., via traits, type parameters, etc.). An obvious question is, why does Rust have 10x more packages than Julia already, and almost a fifth as many as Python?…

Additional considerations here:

Rust invested in a package manager very early, and specifically designed things to make it easy to publish packages.

Rust has a smaller standard library, and so you often need packages to do things that you may not need in other languages, which encourages the use of packages, which I think encourages the publishing of them as well, not to mention that there are gaps that would get filled by packages.

Re: Moving from TypeScript to Rust / WebAssembly

#417

Post by lifeisstillgood »

gen220 wrote: post #413
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sanity, sustainability and fairness I would rather that read It only takes a handful of extremely passionate engineers > It only takes a handful of paid engineers, full time assigned to the task

Anecdotally (I don't work at Google, and this might not apply there because it's such a large company): At the monorepo companies I've worked at, of the 2% passionate I mentioned, maybe half have naturally gravitated towards working FT on the infra teams, the other half make very occasional but astronomical contributions, while working full-time on an actual product. What I mean to say is that with a monorepo, you le…

I don't get this - changing the code is not the problem - this is a political / marketing issue.

I have some news - passion is not enough, and there are more than 2% of people working on things they are passionate about - it only 2% get lucky.

I can think of a few instances in my recent career at large monorepo company where I have built something on the scale of "passionate, could improve our working lives"

One died because ... well I gave up, two are used locally by my team and those I could persuade, whilst other solutions built by others for the same fix have gone on to be blessed officially, (ie replaced by grassroots competition) and one was replaced by a fully mandated and funded project that spotted the need and just steamrollered over all the local fixes.

One is still outstanding and I think well worth pushing still.

But I don't dream of the big win where suddenly the Board says "why, without your glasses Miss Moneypenny you look ravishing".

I get paid, I work, and I try and make the world a bit better where I can. I am passionate about it. But i don't write blog posts about how passionate I am.

Maybe I should :-)

Re: Moving from TypeScript to Rust / WebAssembly

#418

Post by magicmouse »

Rust is extremely poor for web apps and graphical interactive software in general. Having been using Beads (a competitor to typescript) for the last few months, i couldn't possibly build my food ordering app quickly in Rust. There are hundreds of art assets to manage, and every screen has to automatically re-flow depending on the resolution of the device. Without a concept of DPI and the ability to measure text, and have a layout system, all of which is built into the Beads language, it would require a very tedious programming effort. Most of the time coding a graphical interactive product is making it look nice on all the different sized screens; Rust does nothing for this very time consuming task.

Typescript may force you to use the awful CSS, but having some layout system is better than none. And we could also talk about event management, and sync between client and server, none of which Rust is particularly good at.

Re: Moving from TypeScript to Rust / WebAssembly

#419

Post by dang »

mastrsushi wrote: post #131

Migrating a web app to a static typed system programming language is asinine. I swear these fanatics will do anything to say they rewrote it in Rust. This site is full of language-specific indulgent blog posts that are no more sophisticated than arguing over Pokemon cards. I want to see more posts about exciting new concepts like WebAssembly. So sick of hearing that the world would be a better place if the sky and tr…

Please don't "rust wankers" here.

Re: Moving from TypeScript to Rust / WebAssembly

#420

Post by pvg »

dang wrote: post #419
mastrsushi wrote: post #131

Migrating a web app to a static typed system programming language is asinine. I swear these fanatics will do anything to say they rewrote it in Rust. This site is full of language-specific indulgent blog posts that are no more sophisticated than arguing over Pokemon cards. I want to see more posts about exciting new concepts like WebAssembly. So sick of hearing that the world would be a better place if the sky and tr…

Please don't "rust wankers" here.

I hope this is a sign in your executive moderator suite at HN Intergalactic HQ. That you can point to occasionally and say things like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8E7_u2qgjE

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