Should I Rust or Should I Go?

As someone who doesn't know either language, would love HN's opinion on this video that was recommended to me by another HN user on a Rust thread a few days ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-tb1ZfkwgQ

The general gist of the video is the creator prefer Rust for functional programming and programs without much state and Go for everything else. As someone who's coming from a React background I don't see why if Rust is brilliant for functional programming why it can't also be good for programs with state if the right design decisions are taken to handle it - can you not just use a redux style store with actions and reducers?

Re: Should I Rust or Should I Go?

#6

Post by lagniappe » Fri, Sep 15, 2023, 5:58 PM UTC

Why not both? I spend most of my time in Go, but learning other languages is always on my radar, most recently OCaml. It's just fun and helps keep me spry, if that makes sense.

Re: Should I Rust or Should I Go?

#7

Post by vb-8448 » Fri, Sep 15, 2023, 5:58 PM UTC

I think the main point it's missing: what is the context? In the absence of context, any answer is both correct and incorrect, like Schrödinger's cat :D

Re: Should I Rust or Should I Go?

#8

Post by Animats » Fri, Sep 15, 2023, 5:59 PM UTC

- Webcrap - use Go. The arguments for Go for that use case is that 1) Google provides the libraries for most web back-end things you'll need, and since Google uses those libraries internally, even the obscure cases have been exercised, and 2) Goroutines are both low-cost and can block, so you don't have to face Rust async/thread combo hell.

- Hard problems that have concurrency, performance issues, or have to be highly reliable such as a database - use Rust.

Re: Should I Rust or Should I Go?

#9

Post by ketralnis » Fri, Sep 15, 2023, 5:59 PM UTC

Like any time this is asked the real answer is "it depends" while the answer given in the post as in all posts like it is "you should use my favourite instead of your favourite". There's no depth here and nothing that hasn't been said before, don't waste your time.

I know HN isn't a fan of "middlebrow dismissal" but go on, read it and tell me it says anything beyond "I like red better than blue"

Re: Should I Rust or Should I Go?

#10

Post by ngrilly » Fri, Sep 15, 2023, 6:02 PM UTC

> As far as I know, today, Rust is the only programming language (other than C) able to create efficient WebAssembly (wasm) libraries

Zig is also a good option for that, but the language is still in development.