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Multiple startups have wanted to or used Rust for systemsy components because their devs were mainly from dynamic language camps and they felt that in the proce
by Manishearth 11y ago
Multiple startups have wanted to or used Rust for systemsy components because their devs were mainly from dynamic language camps and they felt that in the process of learning Rust you end up learning systems programming, which is less so the case for C++.
Rust does have a lot of features, but for most programming often you don't have to dabble in the more advanced features, which is great. Whilst working on Servo I mostly stuck to the basic features which I was familiar with for a long time and only learned the complicated stuff after a few months out of interest.
One major difference is that Rust forces you to learn about ownership and borrowing up front. This is cognitive load you would have to take in any systemsy language at some point when learning about memory management, Rust just makes you learn it early.
- dbaupp 11y agoYou might be thinking of different start-ups, but I was under the impression that start-ups are using Rust not because they want to learn system programming, but because they need the low-level control but aren't confident using C++ and find Rust's compiler-driven safety very compelling.
- Manishearth 11y agoYeah, that's one part of it, but someone (I think Steve?) mentioned that some startups have realized that the process of learning Rust automatically teaches low level programming concepts, whereas with C++ it's less so. Or something like that;
- steveklabnik 11y agoYes, both Maidsafe and Terminal said things like this. They're more confident in hiring non-systems programmers because rustc is like a teacher.