Ask HN: Why Rust is becoming popular?

#1

Post by gilgamesh3 » Tue, May 14, 2019, 3:37 AM UTC

In the recent times, Rust is becoming very popular, and used more and more by people and companies, but why? What is the pros and cons of Rust? Rust does not even have a spec.

Re: Ask HN: Why Rust is becoming popular?

#2

Post by wmf » Tue, May 14, 2019, 4:05 AM UTC

It's both safe and very efficient (no GC, zero-cost abstractions). There aren't many languages in that niche so Rust has taken it over.

Re: Ask HN: Why Rust is becoming popular?

#3

Post by sidcool » Tue, May 14, 2019, 4:44 AM UTC

I am not sure if it's already famous. What got my attention was that it simplified systems programing. I don't have a C/C++ background, Rust was my first attempt to learn a low level language. It's been rewarding so far.

Re: Ask HN: Why Rust is becoming popular?

#4

Post by topspin » Tue, May 14, 2019, 4:49 AM UTC

Having a "spec" is not a prerequisite to popularity. Perhaps you believe it should be, but it is not.

Rust is effective, reasonably well documented, fully open and delivers something novel; bare metal performance with low defects in a practical language. I find no surprise that this has led to popularity. Just the idea of it was popular before people could really get their hands on it.

Re: Ask HN: Why Rust is becoming popular?

#5

Post by oconnor663 » Tue, May 14, 2019, 6:04 AM UTC

There are many safe languages, but Rust is the only safe language with destructors.

Re: Ask HN: Why Rust is becoming popular?

#6

Post by rurban » Tue, May 14, 2019, 1:44 PM UTC

oconnor663 wrote: post #5

There are many safe languages, but Rust is the only safe language with destructors.

This is untrue. Rust is unsafe in all aspects they are claiming to be safe. It's better than C, C++, or Go, but still type unsafe, memory unsafe and concurrency unsafe.

They are popular due to the wrong hype around their "safeties", and having a healthy community.

Re: Ask HN: Why Rust is becoming popular?

#7

Post by oconnor663 » Tue, May 14, 2019, 2:24 PM UTC

rurban wrote: post #6

oconnor663 wrote: post #5

There are many safe languages, but Rust is the only safe language with destructors.

This is untrue. Rust is unsafe in all aspects they are claiming to be safe. It's better than C, C++, or Go, but still type unsafe, memory unsafe and concurrency unsafe. They are popular due to the wrong hype around their "safeties", and having a healthy community.

If you're concerned about the definition of a word, please go ahead and say what definition you prefer, rather than just saying "I disagree."

Re: Ask HN: Why Rust is becoming popular?

#8

Post by watergatorman » Wed, May 15, 2019, 4:58 AM UTC

Rust popular?

Tiobe language rankings for May 2019:

Rust is ranked 34th at 0.335%, below Lisp and Prolog. Go is ranked 19th at 1.114%. C is ranked 2nd at 14.233%

Rust does not have a stable, standard BNF grammar specification. The language reference document for Rust has 33 or 34 unspecified missing language definitions [see "FIXME" sections].

Re: Ask HN: Why Rust is becoming popular?

#9

Post by vorg » Sun, May 19, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

watergatorman wrote: post #8

Rust popular? Tiobe language rankings for May 2019: Rust is ranked 34th at 0.335%, below Lisp and Prolog. Go is ranked 19th at 1.114%. C is ranked 2nd at 14.233% Rust does not have a stable, standard BNF grammar specification. The language reference document for Rust has 33 or 34 unspecified missing language definitions [see "FIXME" sections].

Even if the Tiobe rankings said Rust was popular, it wouldn't mean much. Their May 2019 rankings also say Apache Groovy has risen from #91 to #17 over the past 12 months, which is clearly wrong. Those rankings are being fiddled with via search engines such as Baidu.