8 ms·

I was wondering: As the HN crowd seems to have quite a lot of Rust supporters, would it be a good selling point in a job description ? i.e if (it's just curre

by allan_s 11y ago

I was wondering: As the HN crowd seems to have quite a lot of Rust supporters, would it be a good selling point in a job description ? i.e if (it's just currently a personal hypothesis) a company were to consider to (re)write some part of its Rest-ish microservices and that Rust was the chosen language, and was looking for people to help on that, would it make a `interesting++` in your mind ? for real services used by real people by a not-so-startup company, in europe. edit: I already deployed in production for my previous company some (with a very stricly limited scope) microservices in rust (with everyone approval) and it was quite a success, so I'm more and more thinking that rust is now enough developed to fit the market of language for microservices, as it's more or less "understand HTTP, read/write from redis/postgresql/mysql/memcache, do some transformation in between" and Rust now support these operations quite well

dikaiosune 11y ago
A friend of mine asked me about this last weekend, and I basically said that I've drunk enough kool-aid at this point to do anything to use it as my main work language. I'm lucky enough right now to have a lot of autonomy for my projects, and I'm using that to build some tools in Rust, but it's different than being able to focus on it full time.
- seivan 11y ago
  I know the feeling. I'd sacrifice my own free time to fill the gaps I know it's missing from Rails, it's only fair as I would operate 10x faster with things I'm comfortable with and has a full set toolbox. Considering Rust but, would prefer Swift or Typescript.
azdle 11y ago
It would be for me, but like dikaiosune I've drunk the Rust koolaid almost fully by now. But honestly, even if I hadn't it's be a selling point to me because it tells me that you're a place that isn't stuck writing everything in a single language but are willing to try new things are willing to use what seems to be the right tool for the job.
- kbenson 11y ago
  Well, sometimes depending on company size, number of developer developers, developer pool skill set, and many other factors, having a single (or very few) languages is a factor in the right tool. It's better when that's not the case though.
CuriousSkeptic 11y ago
It just seems like an odd use case for rust. I can see how it would be attractive as an alternative to c++ or other systems language. But for shuffling data? Also, since you mentioned PostgreSQL, if you can make the db handle json the shuffling part should be really trivial. Give node.js + pg-promise a spin for comparison. But then again, I haven't used Rust for anything serious, so am happy to be wrong.
- dikaiosune 11y ago
  I've always liked the idea of using "systems" languages for data shuffling, because of the ability in some cases to stretch hardware several orders of magnitude further. I read this a while ago and just dug it up: http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=95 http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=95 It's a bit silly, but I do think that Rust could be a very good solution here. For one thing, in my experience it is much easier to write than C++, especially for something you'd feel comfortable pointing at users. It would be cool to see some articles that are the reverse of "scale all the things," something like "sympathize with all the caches."
  - Rusky 11y ago
    A blog I've really enjoyed on that subject is Mechanical Sympathy: http://mechanical-sympathy.blogspot.com/ http://mechanical-sympathy.blogspot.com/
    - nickpsecurity 11y ago
      First thing I see is an encoder and list of good design rules. This blog could be a gold mine if other articles are similar. Thanks for the link.
    - ddorian43 11y ago
      Also the forum https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mechanical-sympathy https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mechanical-sympathy
  - sitkack 11y ago
peteretep 11y ago
I'm a recruiter (and a developer). Yes it would. People love to be trained on a new software stack at someone else's expense, especially if they're not having to take a seniority hit to go there.
Thaxll 11y ago
I don't understand why would you choose Rust over Go for backend stuff. From what I see here on HN, Rust doesn't target backend app?
- eru 11y ago
  Rust is a nicer language than Go---especially its type system. That might be reason enough. What do you mean by `doesn't target backend app'?
- echelon 11y ago
  I've already written several components of my home automation system in Rust. Mio, Hyper, Iron, etc. are great tools for developing microservices. I cross-compiled this stuff to run on Raspberry Pi, and the binaries are so small and performant!
  - jonreem 11y ago
    Hey, main author of iron here, I'd love to hear more about your use of iron! It's always nice to hear from users and your feedback is crucial to driving the project forward. Feel free to respond here or reach out (contact details in my profile, you can find me as reem on the mozilla irc network).
  - Manishearth 11y ago
    I'd really love to see some blog posts and/or code about this. It sounds super-cool!
  - Cshelton 11y ago
    Awesome! I'm working on a home automation platform as well! Not close to being done (started last week). I'd love to see some code or examples of what you've come up with!
- paulddraper 11y ago
  Because he doesn't enjoy casting every time he iterates over a collection? Because he doesn't like NULL pointers aka the worst mistake of CS?https://www.lucidchart.com/techblog/2015/08/31/the-worst-mistake-of-computer-science/ https://www.lucidchart.com/techblog/2015/08/31/the-worst-mis... Because he doesn't want a package manager that always fetches HEAD? I'm not saying Go is a poorly designed language where the answer to every decision is the easiest one for the implementors. I'm just saying there's a legitimate case to be made.
vitno 11y ago
yes. I would do pretty much anything to work in Rust at this point.
shepmaster 11y ago
Absolutely. And if you hire remote, I'd be happy to apply!
lmm 11y ago
If I couldn't find a job writing Scala or OCaml or F# (all of which I'd consider better options for rest-ish backends) then I'd look for one writing Rust. As I got more into this kind of language I found that the language tools gave me very strict isolation, which lowered the value of separating everything at the process level. So I've shifted towards a more monolithic style of architecture.

by allan_s 11y ago

dikaiosune 11y ago

A friend of mine asked me about this last weekend, and I basically said that I've drunk enough kool-aid at this point to do anything to use it as my main work language. I'm lucky enough right now to have a lot of autonomy for my projects, and I'm using that to build some tools in Rust, but it's different than being able to focus on it full time.

seivan 11y ago
I know the feeling. I'd sacrifice my own free time to fill the gaps I know it's missing from Rails, it's only fair as I would operate 10x faster with things I'm comfortable with and has a full set toolbox. Considering Rust but, would prefer Swift or Typescript.

azdle 11y ago

It would be for me, but like dikaiosune I've drunk the Rust koolaid almost fully by now. But honestly, even if I hadn't it's be a selling point to me because it tells me that you're a place that isn't stuck writing everything in a single language but are willing to try new things are willing to use what seems to be the right tool for the job.

kbenson 11y ago
Well, sometimes depending on company size, number of developer developers, developer pool skill set, and many other factors, having a single (or very few) languages is a factor in the right tool. It's better when that's not the case though.

CuriousSkeptic 11y ago

It just seems like an odd use case for rust. I can see how it would be attractive as an alternative to c++ or other systems language. But for shuffling data? Also, since you mentioned PostgreSQL, if you can make the db handle json the shuffling part should be really trivial. Give node.js + pg-promise a spin for comparison. But then again, I haven't used Rust for anything serious, so am happy to be wrong.

dikaiosune 11y ago
I've always liked the idea of using "systems" languages for data shuffling, because of the ability in some cases to stretch hardware several orders of magnitude further. I read this a while ago and just dug it up: http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=95 http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=95 It's a bit silly, but I do think that Rust could be a very good solution here. For one thing, in my experience it is much easier to write than C++, especially for something you'd feel comfortable pointing at users. It would be cool to see some articles that are the reverse of "scale all the things," something like "sympathize with all the caches."
- Rusky 11y ago
  A blog I've really enjoyed on that subject is Mechanical Sympathy: http://mechanical-sympathy.blogspot.com/ http://mechanical-sympathy.blogspot.com/
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    First thing I see is an encoder and list of good design rules. This blog could be a gold mine if other articles are similar. Thanks for the link.
  - ddorian43 11y ago
    Also the forum https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mechanical-sympathy https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mechanical-sympathy
- sitkack 11y ago

peteretep 11y ago

I'm a recruiter (and a developer). Yes it would. People love to be trained on a new software stack at someone else's expense, especially if they're not having to take a seniority hit to go there.

Thaxll 11y ago

I don't understand why would you choose Rust over Go for backend stuff. From what I see here on HN, Rust doesn't target backend app?

eru 11y ago
Rust is a nicer language than Go---especially its type system. That might be reason enough. What do you mean by `doesn't target backend app'?
echelon 11y ago
I've already written several components of my home automation system in Rust. Mio, Hyper, Iron, etc. are great tools for developing microservices. I cross-compiled this stuff to run on Raspberry Pi, and the binaries are so small and performant!
- jonreem 11y ago
  Hey, main author of iron here, I'd love to hear more about your use of iron! It's always nice to hear from users and your feedback is crucial to driving the project forward. Feel free to respond here or reach out (contact details in my profile, you can find me as reem on the mozilla irc network).
- Manishearth 11y ago
  I'd really love to see some blog posts and/or code about this. It sounds super-cool!
- Cshelton 11y ago
  Awesome! I'm working on a home automation platform as well! Not close to being done (started last week). I'd love to see some code or examples of what you've come up with!
paulddraper 11y ago
Because he doesn't enjoy casting every time he iterates over a collection? Because he doesn't like NULL pointers aka the worst mistake of CS?https://www.lucidchart.com/techblog/2015/08/31/the-worst-mistake-of-computer-science/ https://www.lucidchart.com/techblog/2015/08/31/the-worst-mis... Because he doesn't want a package manager that always fetches HEAD? I'm not saying Go is a poorly designed language where the answer to every decision is the easiest one for the implementors. I'm just saying there's a legitimate case to be made.

vitno 11y ago

yes. I would do pretty much anything to work in Rust at this point.

shepmaster 11y ago

Absolutely. And if you hire remote, I'd be happy to apply!

lmm 11y ago

If I couldn't find a job writing Scala or OCaml or F# (all of which I'd consider better options for rest-ish backends) then I'd look for one writing Rust. As I got more into this kind of language I found that the language tools gave me very strict isolation, which lowered the value of separating everything at the process level. So I've shifted towards a more monolithic style of architecture.