Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What's the Deal with HN and Rust?

news.ycombinator.com

1–10 of 108 posts

Re: Ask HN: What's the Deal with HN and Rust?

#2
It solves a large class of problems that are not handled in C and C++. Some people are hyped that it can solve all problems under the son, while others don't like the hype talk or are deeply invested in C and C++ knowledge and don't like their belittlement.

Re: Ask HN: What's the Deal with HN and Rust?

#3
post #2

It solves a large class of problems that are not handled in C and C++. Some people are hyped that it can solve all problems under the son, while others don't like the hype talk or are deeply invested in C and C++ knowledge and don't like their belittlement.

Without compare language/platform abilities, it looks like a major hype cycle like Node or even Java back in the 90s and early 2000s. I read HN and see a lot of stuff around Rust that I don't see elsewhere, so this is also kind of a "why here?" question too. =)

Re: Ask HN: What's the Deal with HN and Rust?

#5
post #3
post #2

It solves a large class of problems that are not handled in C and C++. Some people are hyped that it can solve all problems under the son, while others don't like the hype talk or are deeply invested in C and C++ knowledge and don't like their belittlement.

Without compare language/platform abilities, it looks like a major hype cycle like Node or even Java back in the 90s and early 2000s. I read HN and see a lot of stuff around Rust that I don't see elsewhere, so this is also kind of a "why here?" question too. =)

I don't know where do you compare it to, but the advantages of rust are more technical and not so business oriented as Node or Java. Node and Java were "write once, use twice or more" and it was a major business saving of time and developer resources. Rust's advantage is correctness and lack of bugs which is harder to sell to execs whose horizon is the next quarter profits and not the long-term maintenance costs of the project.

Re: Ask HN: What's the Deal with HN and Rust?

#6
inexperienced novices and disheartened veterans alike get infatuated with that new shiny thing ...

the rest of just smirk at the pump articles, as we have achieved state of Zen and realize _all_code_is_garbage_ and that nobody, other than minuscule amount of people who ever had a git write access in their life, actually care or will ever care about code let alone a programing language the app was written in

Re: Ask HN: What's the Deal with HN and Rust?

#7

inexperienced novices and disheartened veterans alike get infatuated with that new shiny thing ... the rest of just smirk at the pump articles, as we have achieved state of Zen and realize _all_code_is_garbage_ and that nobody, other than minuscule amount of people who ever had a git write access in their life, actually care or will ever care about code let alone a programing language the app was written in

There is a reason disheartened veterans gravitate toward a project like Rust. We've seen a lot in our career and much of what we do when it comes to our own tools is automate the detection and elimination of causes of bugs where we can.

It is possible to recognize that "all code is garbage" and "it is a miracle anything works" while also still pushing our industry forward and improving lives for software engineers. A language like Rust is about a particular kind of ergonomic fix. It gives engineers tools to prevent certain kinds of bugs from the beginning if they properly utilize them. It gives you tools that other languages do not have built in so will require more work to use in a disciplined way.

For some people they won't care. They aren't craftsmen they are factory floor assemblers. They glue stuff together and quality isn't the top concern. This is not meant to be a critique. There is a large market for that. IKEA serves an actual need for many people. By all means there is still a place for the Java, Node, Ruby, or Python developer out there. There is more of a market for factory floor assemblers than there are craftsmen.

I personally though still prefer to be in the craftsmen category and for that reason Rust is exciting because it gives me tools that I would formerly have had to reach for OCaml, Haskell, or Lisp to use but makes them more ergonomic without introducing other issues at the some same time. It's a pragmatic application of concepts that we've been exploring since the 70's and finally get to see bearing fruit. Brushing it off as just the "next shiny thing" is doing it a disservice.

Re: Ask HN: What's the Deal with HN and Rust?

#9
post #7

inexperienced novices and disheartened veterans alike get infatuated with that new shiny thing ... the rest of just smirk at the pump articles, as we have achieved state of Zen and realize _all_code_is_garbage_ and that nobody, other than minuscule amount of people who ever had a git write access in their life, actually care or will ever care about code let alone a programing language the app was written in

There is a reason disheartened veterans gravitate toward a project like Rust. We've seen a lot in our career and much of what we do when it comes to our own tools is automate the detection and elimination of causes of bugs where we can. It is possible to recognize that "all code is garbage" and "it is a miracle anything works" while also still pushing our industry forward and improving lives for software engineers. A…

The LISP comparison doesn’t ring true to me or even the ‘ergonomic ML’. There is nothing ergonomic about Rust at all compared to managed languages, but if you are willing to fight with the borrow checker you can get managed language safety with C speed. (I wonder though if we’d be better off with a closely integrated assembler and theorem prover if portability was not so important.)

Re: Ask HN: What's the Deal with HN and Rust?

#10
post #2

It solves a large class of problems that are not handled in C and C++. Some people are hyped that it can solve all problems under the son, while others don't like the hype talk or are deeply invested in C and C++ knowledge and don't like their belittlement.

There isn’t anything you can do in Rust that somebody couldn’t do in C-Thulu, but the Rust version might be secure and the C-Thulu version won’t be.
Post reply on HN