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Using Rust at a startup: A cautionary tale

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Re: Using Rust at a startup: A cautionary tale

#61

Post by saurik »

candiddevmike wrote: post #53
saurik wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that, while the benefits of trading safety vs. velocity go to the company, the costs go to the user, as it is the user whose data or identity will be stolen. And this goes well beyond Rust and "mere" memory safety: this extends to every kind of taking things slow and being careful in your coding rather than just throwing something together and later finding out you've made a serious error. This is why…

Rust still won't save you from logic errors, so I guess I don't see your point.

I don't disagree?... The idea that moving fast is more important than correct and safe code--because a startup can't afford to waste time on these matters as their competitors who "don't give a shit" will eat their lunch--goes well beyond Rust and mere memory safety.

Re: Using Rust at a startup: A cautionary tale

#62

Post by satvikpendem »

candiddevmike wrote: post #50
satvikpendem wrote: post #36

I'm not sure I agree with the article's premises. Rust can be difficult, yes, but it can also heighten developer productivity above other languages. In Go, I'd have to worry about whether I checked for exceptions via `if err != nil` everywhere, while with Rust, I can depend on the compiler telling me if I haven't done so exhaustively, via the Result type. Same for having algebraic data types or, well, generics in gen…

God I get tired of the if err criticism with Go. I truthfully don't even notice it when I write Go, I don't understand why folks get so bent out of shape over it.

Your profile link doesn't work. Regarding `if err`, it's one thing to add it everywhere, it's another to forget and then have something break. If Go also checked for exhaustive error handling, I wouldn't mind it either.

Re: Using Rust at a startup: A cautionary tale

#63

Post by williamcotton »

andrewmutz wrote: post #31

> This project was a cloud-based SaaS product that is, more-or-less, a conventional CRUD app I would love to hear what tech stack (or stacks) the HN community thinks currently allows a small team to move fastest for this type of product.

Ruby on Rails.

Re: Using Rust at a startup: A cautionary tale

#64

Post by [deleted] »

candiddevmike wrote: post #50
satvikpendem wrote: post #36

I'm not sure I agree with the article's premises. Rust can be difficult, yes, but it can also heighten developer productivity above other languages. In Go, I'd have to worry about whether I checked for exceptions via `if err != nil` everywhere, while with Rust, I can depend on the compiler telling me if I haven't done so exhaustively, via the Result type. Same for having algebraic data types or, well, generics in gen…

God I get tired of the if err criticism with Go. I truthfully don't even notice it when I write Go, I don't understand why folks get so bent out of shape over it.

[deleted]

Re: Using Rust at a startup: A cautionary tale

#65

Post by satvikpendem »

saurik wrote: post #48
andsoitis wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as it is the user whose data or identity will be stolen. that seems a little alarmist, don't you think?

I'm sorry, do you somehow think that is a theoretical concern? I seriously won a $2M bug bounty earlier this year because the CEO of a company wanted to "move fast and break things" their way to a financial product offering :/.

Congratulations on becoming a millionaire! That's pretty cool (for you at least, probably not their customers).

Re: Using Rust at a startup: A cautionary tale

#66

Post by saurik »

chrisco255 wrote: post #41
saurik wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that, while the benefits of trading safety vs. velocity go to the company, the costs go to the user, as it is the user whose data or identity will be stolen. And this goes well beyond Rust and "mere" memory safety: this extends to every kind of taking things slow and being careful in your coding rather than just throwing something together and later finding out you've made a serious error. This is why…

Data security in a SaaS application has more to do with proper role based access to databases than with memory safety. There is nothing in Rust that provides superior role-based security for SaaS than existing frameworks in every major backend language.

I don't disagree, but it sounds like you somehow magically think someone who refuses to trade off velocity for safety--which was a genetic premise that doesn't have much to do with Rust in specific--won't also mess up everything else they touch, which seems far fetched.

Re: Using Rust at a startup: A cautionary tale

#67

Post by sarchertech »

saurik wrote: post #48
andsoitis wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as it is the user whose data or identity will be stolen. that seems a little alarmist, don't you think?

I'm sorry, do you somehow think that is a theoretical concern? I seriously won a $2M bug bounty earlier this year because the CEO of a company wanted to "move fast and break things" their way to a financial product offering :/.

The CEO wanted to move fast and break things with respect to security but offered a $2 million bug bounty?

Re: Using Rust at a startup: A cautionary tale

#68

Post by pclmulqdq »

insanitybit wrote: post #3

Interesting. By contrast, I wish I had used less Python and more Rust for my company's product because Rust is considerably more productive. We were building gRPC and web services. I just haven't found it to be the case that developers have a very hard time learning it, but we haven't grown to the point where that would maybe be the case. We also lean heavily into microservices so "oh there's no library in Rust but t…

In my experience, Python is one of the least productive programming languages for projects with more than 3 people. If you have a big project, you are going to spend a lot more time reading code than writing it. Python is write-optimized.

By contrast, using Rust makes it easy to force a readable coding style on yourself and others.

Re: Using Rust at a startup: A cautionary tale

#69

Post by lemmox »

> Rust was used primarily because a couple of the founders of the company were Rust experts

It's remarkable how significantly the first few months of a project impact the first few years of a company. How quickly casual & spontaneous decisions, largely based on convenience and familiarity, ossify into legacy drag.

Re: Using Rust at a startup: A cautionary tale

#70

Post by KingLancelot »

ahungry wrote: post #14

I've noticed that Rust is in an interesting spot - it has a lot of overlapping appeal with various groups. - C/C++ developers like it as an alternative for low level languages - Functional programmers like it because of it's functional features - "Cargo Culters" / "Hot Language" / "Flavor of the Month" followers like it, as it's in vogue at the moment (this is the crowd that has likely shifted from various web/API sc…

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