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Stop Whining about Rust Hype – A Pro-Rust Rant

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Re: Stop Whining about Rust Hype – A Pro-Rust Rant

#51

Post by ok_dad »

DenseComet wrote: post #29
ok_dad wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python is fine if you have a good IDE and a very strict type checker config. I use the most strict configs I can manage and it's almost at par with static typed languages, at least where you're developing and refactoring. Runtime is another matter altogether, though I've never had problems with Python once I have ensured types going in and out match and validate inputs.

The problem with Python type checking is that the general community still does not write libraries with types. On the other hand, the JS community is further along and most libraries written today include TS files. I think the same will happen with Python, but it obviously takes time.

I’ll give you that. I only use standard library stuff and some really good 3rd party libraries that either have types or type hint packages.

Re: Stop Whining about Rust Hype – A Pro-Rust Rant

#52

Post by rich_sasha »

hresvelgr wrote: post #2

The Rust zealots I've noticed tend to have just very recently encountered the language. The developers who use it in production systems and in non-trivial applications tend to have a more mellow opinion lacking hype or whatever. I use it during the work week and it solves a lot of problems and the ecosystem is maturing very quickly. Serde is by far the biggest boon of the language. It is truly state of the art as far…

Since you’re kind enough to express a moderate opinion: do you have a comparison against C++?

The C++ “niche” seems to be no-performance-compromise, low-level-when-needed, high-level-sort-of, native compilation, seamless interop with C, and thus everything else. It is also very verbose, easy to shoot yourself in the foot, and requires a fair amount of proficiency to just use on a daily basis.

Can Rust be the replacement / successor?

Re: Stop Whining about Rust Hype – A Pro-Rust Rant

#53

Post by kobebrookskC3 »

ncmncm wrote: post #50
mdoms wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C#, a 21 year old programming language which consistently makes it into the top 6 programming languages by popularity in all methodologies of measuring, "launched and soon sank with little trace"? That's an interesting take.

Hope springs eternal. We can be pretty confident, anyway, that it won't outlive Microsoft.

is that saying anything if microsoft is basically eternal? what, you think the company that makes excel and windows is gonna go out of business any time soon?

Re: Stop Whining about Rust Hype – A Pro-Rust Rant

#54

Post by kobebrookskC3 »

dizon wrote: post #38

Rust could have been a great systems programming language. Unfortunately, it has been taken over by web developers. All systems programming jobs are still in C/C++. It could have been different if Mozilla hadn't rewritten all of Firefox in Rust while complaining about C++. Firefox dropped from 10% of the web to 3% and into irrelevance during that Rust rewrite and gained nothing. Ironically, Chrome is written in C++ a…

i eagerly await the day when chrome realizes their current situation of being written in a memory unsafe language is untenable. it seems like they're still in denial, but they're slowly realizing https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vSt2VB1zQAJ6...

Re: Stop Whining about Rust Hype – A Pro-Rust Rant

#55

Post by PoignardAzur »

ferdowsi wrote: post #28

Rust evangelism is one of the cleaner examples of people absorbing a technology as an element of personal identity . You have all the hallmarks: - rhetoric taking on levels of hostile zealotry like the linked post - aggressive insertion of the topic in conversations where it is inappropriate - inability or resistance to recognizing faults For another modern example of technology as crusade, see "the blockchain". It's…

> rhetoric taking on levels of hostile zealotry like the linked post

Honestly, this feels like bad faith.

The article explicitly says "this is a rant for catharsis, not a serious argument" and ends with a list of caveats and "okay actually it's more complicated" bits left out of the article.

Even if you take it seriously, you're implying that it's representative of the average Rust advocacy post, but this is easily the strongest piece of rhetoric I've seen in Rust advocacy.

You're implying that "levels of hostile zealotry" are commonplace, but every post I've seen advocating Rust on HN has been polite; for every post saying "this is a problem that Rust could solve" there's at least one answer saying "I like Rust but in this case maybe the costs of refactoring would be too high".

> inability or resistance to recognizing faults

Again, that hasn't been my experience at all.

Re: Stop Whining about Rust Hype – A Pro-Rust Rant

#56

Post by PoignardAzur »

SiebenHeaven wrote: post #32
postalrat wrote: post #11

Stop treating written in rust as a feature.

If you have looked at rust, you would understand that "Written in Rust" means something more than just the face value. Written in Rust means that there will be less memory/concurrency bugs due to the language itself ruling out classes of those bugs and that is a feature that I would definitely care about in any peice of software I use.

> If you have looked at rust, you would understand that

That's needlessly inflammatory.

Re: Stop Whining about Rust Hype – A Pro-Rust Rant

#57

Post by PoignardAzur »

ncmncm wrote: post #30

Stop whining about whining about Rust hype. We don't need to know that your new shell / grep / text editor is coded in Rust. If it's good, it's good for other reasons, and those reasons are certain to be overwhelmingly more interesting. If it's bad, it's just bad, and that won't save it. We especially don't need to know in the title . We especially don't need to know your (embarrassingly outdated) opinions about othe…

> There is no harm in mentioning implementation languages in the bit at the end where you invite people to send patches

Okay, but... there's no harm in mentioning implementation languages in the title either?

If you don't care, that's fine, you can just ignore it.

To me, "built with [new technology]" is a sign that the person who made it had fun, and is proud of their work. It's like an engineer posting "look at our new car prototype, built with [fancy new internal chassis technology]". Maybe it doesn't change anything for the person driving, but it's obviously of interest for the engineer, and potentially for other car-internals-geeks as well.

Re: Stop Whining about Rust Hype – A Pro-Rust Rant

#58

Post by nyanpasu64 »

rich_sasha wrote: post #52
hresvelgr wrote: post #2

The Rust zealots I've noticed tend to have just very recently encountered the language. The developers who use it in production systems and in non-trivial applications tend to have a more mellow opinion lacking hype or whatever. I use it during the work week and it solves a lot of problems and the ecosystem is maturing very quickly. Serde is by far the biggest boon of the language. It is truly state of the art as far…

Since you’re kind enough to express a moderate opinion: do you have a comparison against C++? The C++ “niche” seems to be no-performance-compromise, low-level-when-needed, high-level-sort-of, native compilation, seamless interop with C, and thus everything else. It is also very verbose, easy to shoot yourself in the foot, and requires a fair amount of proficiency to just use on a daily basis. Can Rust be the replacem…

Not the parent, but I think in a vacuum Rust would be pretty good at filling C++'s niche (minimal performance compromise, low-level-when-needed, high-level-sort-of, native compilation, though C interop is less seamless), plus it's more expressive/beautiful (but more troublesome if you want to mutate aliased pointers), and teaches you upfront to avoid pitfalls. But Rust has less thorough library support (though Rust does have some really cool libraries), and the existing practices around separate compilation and stable ABI can't be carried to Rust. I also dislike the culture of downloading dependencies from the Internet.

Re: Stop Whining about Rust Hype – A Pro-Rust Rant

#59

Post by couchand »

rich_sasha wrote: post #52
hresvelgr wrote: post #2

The Rust zealots I've noticed tend to have just very recently encountered the language. The developers who use it in production systems and in non-trivial applications tend to have a more mellow opinion lacking hype or whatever. I use it during the work week and it solves a lot of problems and the ecosystem is maturing very quickly. Serde is by far the biggest boon of the language. It is truly state of the art as far…

Since you’re kind enough to express a moderate opinion: do you have a comparison against C++? The C++ “niche” seems to be no-performance-compromise, low-level-when-needed, high-level-sort-of, native compilation, seamless interop with C, and thus everything else. It is also very verbose, easy to shoot yourself in the foot, and requires a fair amount of proficiency to just use on a daily basis. Can Rust be the replacem…

For what it's worth, I think of Rust as simply encoding modern C++ best practices in the compiler and dropping all the old cruft.

Re: Stop Whining about Rust Hype – A Pro-Rust Rant

#60

Post by ncmncm »

kobebrookskC3 wrote: post #53
ncmncm wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hope springs eternal. We can be pretty confident, anyway, that it won't outlive Microsoft.

is that saying anything if microsoft is basically eternal? what, you think the company that makes excel and windows is gonna go out of business any time soon?

The usual route is becoming irrelevant. Windos failed to achieve relevance in mobile and cloud, and desktops become less relevant every day. If at some point you don't need MS to do excel anymore, MS becomes irrelevant there, too.

There are still Burroughs, Univac, and Honeywell computer companies, in a way, but they attract no attention.

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