Farewell, Rust for web

Post by bitwize » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 10:04 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #61

chrash wrote: post #32

the idea of one language to rule them all is very compelling. it’s been promised a lot, and now everyone hates Java. but the truth is that Rust is not meant for everything. UI is an abstraction layer that is very human and dynamic. and i can come and say, “well, we can hide that dynamism with clever graph composition tricks” à la Elm, React, Compose, etc, but the machinery that you have to build for even the simplest…

Rust is "Jack of all trades, master of some". There are real advantages to choosing a jack of all trades language for everything; for example it makes it easier for an engineer on one part of your project to help out on a different part of your project. But it sounds like the OP didn't get any of the benefits of "jack of all trades", nor did he choose a field where Rust is "master of some".

Post by slopinthebag » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 10:10 PM UTC

killerbreeze wrote: post #66

slopinthebag wrote: post #62

As someone who went in the opposite direction from Node to Rust, I feel like OP is just trading one set of problems for another set of substantially worse problems. I guess the grass is always greener in the other ecosystem ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Idk, it just feels like OP chose all the wrong approaches with Rust, including using a separate language and ecosystem for the frontend, which is where most of the friction comes from. F…

I think this is spot on. I've used Iced and Dioxus and both are great. I do take the author's point that the actual UI code, even in Dioxus, is verbose. It is. And that's a trade off I'm willing to make for guaranteed correctness.

   let mut breed = use_signal(|| "hound".to_string());

   let dogs = use_resource(move || async move {
     reqwest::Client::new()
       .get(format!("https://dog.ceo/api/breed/{breed}/images"))
       .send()
       .await?
       .json::()
       .await
   });

   rsx! {
     input {
       value: "{breed}",
       oninput: move |e| breed.set(e.value()),
     }

     div {
       display: "flex",
       flex_direction: "row",
       if let Some(response) = &*dogs.read() {
         match response {
           Ok(urls) => rsx! {
             for image in urls.iter().take(3) {
               img {
                 src: "{image}",
                 width: "100px",
                 height: "100px",
               }
             }
           },
           Err(err) => rsx! { "Failed to fetch response: {err}" },
         }
       } else {
         "Loading..."
       }
     }
   }

Post by pstuart » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 10:12 PM UTC

robviren wrote: post #14

I find the dependency creep for both rust and node unfortunate. Almost anything I add explodes the deps and makes me sweat for maintenance, vulnerabilities, etc. I also feel perpetually behind, which I think is basically frontend default mode. Go does the one thing I wish Rust had more of which is a pretty darn great standard library with total backwards compatibility promises. There are awkward things with Go, but m…

  A little copying is better than a little dependency.

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 10:19 PM UTC

Mond_ wrote: post #64

slopinthebag wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those deps have to come from somewhere, right? Unless you're actually rolling your own everything, and with languages that don't have package managers what you end up doing is just adding submodules of various libraries and running their cmake configs, which is at least as insecure as NPM or Crates.io. Go is a bit unique a it has a really substantial stdlib, so you eliminate some of the necessary deps, but it's also…

The tradeoff Go made is that certain code just cannot be written in it. Its STD exists because Go is a language built around a "good enough" philosophy, and it gets painful once you leave that path.

Post by jmalicki » Thu, Feb 19, 2026, 10:30 PM UTC

wofo wrote: post #33

I'm a heavy Rust user and fan, but I'd never pick Rust for web. There are way more mature ecosystems out there to choose from. Why would you waste "innovation tokens" in a Rust-based web application?