5 ms·

Agreed. I foresee a great future for Rust, and also a great future for HN posts in the form: "I know I'll get downvoted for this, but Rust is a terrible langua

by loudmax 11y ago

Agreed. I foresee a great future for Rust, and also a great future for HN posts in the form: "I know I'll get downvoted for this, but Rust is a terrible language because it lacks the following features..."

nine_k 11y ago
Not likely. Rust, while lacking in various aspects as any v.1 release would, already has means of extension. A library can mostly replace a lacking feature while playing nice with the rest of the ecosystem by use of the type system and the macro system. Roughly the same kind of extensibility is possible in Python (some later language features first appeared as approximations in third-party libraries) and even Java (where a kind of code post-processing is possible via annotations). Unfortunately, it's unreasonably hard in Go. All you got so far is un-hygienic macros, slightly better than C #defines. This is sad because a number of other ideas in Go are right and well-implemented.
sanderjd 11y ago
In the medium to long run, I suspect criticism of Rust will be more along the lines of criticism of C++ – too ambitious, too many features, too hard to do simple things, too easy to do unsafe low level things – rather than along the lines of "lacks these features".
koffiezet 11y ago
While Rust in it's own little world is promising, it's issue is that it tries to solve problems C++ programmers were facing 10 years ago, but 'good practices' and C++ devs limiting themselves to a subset of features "solved" most of these problems for most C++ developers. And that's Rust's main target audience. Go's target audience are 2 groups: people previously writing stuff in C/C++ because they didn't have much choice unless they wanted to bring a shitton of dependencies, but in reality didn't want the complexity this brings, and people coming from scripting languages like Python and Ruby. And for these things, go is pretty damn good. It has it's downsides - like any language, but it works. It's strongest point however is it's standard library with 'modern features' and transparency. For me it was the first language where diving into the source code of libraries - even the stdlib - was so effortless and has become a completely normal thing to do. In C/C++, the most you do is dive into the headers, and in the latter case, this is not always a good idea if you want to keep your sanity (hello Boost). Rust could gain traction the moment it finds a market, and few high profile projects written in Rust that are widely used. But right now, I'm not aware of any.
- seren 11y ago
  Servo is one, but I believe that Rust needs another high profile project targeted to the embedded or low level system world to gain mind share. It has to demonstrate that Rust > ( C/C++ + Static/dynamic analysis ) in terms of safety and productivity.
- mtrn 11y ago
  > For me it was the first language where diving into the source code of libraries - even the stdlib - was so effortless and has become a completely normal thing to do. A great point. It is amazing how many little things Go and its ecosystem provides, that other languages have missed for years: go fmt. linked documentation. play.golang.org, and more. The language may look like it comes from the 80s, but the tooling is avant-garde.

by loudmax 11y ago

nine_k 11y ago

Not likely. Rust, while lacking in various aspects as any v.1 release would, already has means of extension. A library can mostly replace a lacking feature while playing nice with the rest of the ecosystem by use of the type system and the macro system. Roughly the same kind of extensibility is possible in Python (some later language features first appeared as approximations in third-party libraries) and even Java (where a kind of code post-processing is possible via annotations). Unfortunately, it's unreasonably hard in Go. All you got so far is un-hygienic macros, slightly better than C #defines. This is sad because a number of other ideas in Go are right and well-implemented.

sanderjd 11y ago

In the medium to long run, I suspect criticism of Rust will be more along the lines of criticism of C++ – too ambitious, too many features, too hard to do simple things, too easy to do unsafe low level things – rather than along the lines of "lacks these features".

koffiezet 11y ago

While Rust in it's own little world is promising, it's issue is that it tries to solve problems C++ programmers were facing 10 years ago, but 'good practices' and C++ devs limiting themselves to a subset of features "solved" most of these problems for most C++ developers. And that's Rust's main target audience. Go's target audience are 2 groups: people previously writing stuff in C/C++ because they didn't have much choice unless they wanted to bring a shitton of dependencies, but in reality didn't want the complexity this brings, and people coming from scripting languages like Python and Ruby. And for these things, go is pretty damn good. It has it's downsides - like any language, but it works. It's strongest point however is it's standard library with 'modern features' and transparency. For me it was the first language where diving into the source code of libraries - even the stdlib - was so effortless and has become a completely normal thing to do. In C/C++, the most you do is dive into the headers, and in the latter case, this is not always a good idea if you want to keep your sanity (hello Boost). Rust could gain traction the moment it finds a market, and few high profile projects written in Rust that are widely used. But right now, I'm not aware of any.

seren 11y ago
Servo is one, but I believe that Rust needs another high profile project targeted to the embedded or low level system world to gain mind share. It has to demonstrate that Rust > ( C/C++ + Static/dynamic analysis ) in terms of safety and productivity.
mtrn 11y ago
> For me it was the first language where diving into the source code of libraries - even the stdlib - was so effortless and has become a completely normal thing to do. A great point. It is amazing how many little things Go and its ecosystem provides, that other languages have missed for years: go fmt. linked documentation. play.golang.org, and more. The language may look like it comes from the 80s, but the tooling is avant-garde.