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> I've also heard it's for systems programming, which makes me think of C and has kept me away from it. One of its major goals is making systems programming mo

> I've also heard it's for systems programming, which makes me think of C and has kept me away from it. One of its major goals is making systems programming more accessible. So you shouldn't dismiss it because "systems programming = C", it's trying to change that! :) That's not to say it won't involve learning some systemsy concepts. But it won't be as scary as C. You can't necessarily bang out scripts quickly. A type system tends to make this task verbose. However, larger applications benefit a lot from that type system. We've often had feedback from Python/JS shops using Rust that learning Rust had the side effect of teaching them systems programming. I think that's pretty awesome.

johnwheeler 10y ago
I guess I'm contrasting Python with my Java experience so far as banging out prototypes quickly. In Java, I don't think the type system gets in the way so much as its classpath. It's been a long time since I've done Java, but you'd have to get your jars in order and write an ant or maven script to do the compile/run steps (or at least a bash script). I like that with Python I can just do pip install whatever and begin using the module immediately in my main method. In Java, It's not standard practice to copy jars into the system classpath IIRC, so you'd have to copy them around every time you want to do something new. I need to investigate Rust's command line interface. Obviously, the more it can get close to python main.py vs. javac -cp foo/Bar.jar:baz/Quux.jar Main.java; java --classpath foo/Bar.jar:baz/Quux.jar Main the better it will be for this use case I mention. Thanks to both of you for responding!
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  I believe Rust's package manager, Cargo, is quite similar to pip in functionality. I haven't used it myself, so I could be wrong.
  - steveklabnik 10y ago
    In some ways. It's also got the features of https://github.com/pypa/pipfile https://github.com/pypa/pipfile
  - jdright 10y ago
    It is way better than pip on the sense it works everytime. pip is not painless. It is close but miss by little. Got to hate it because of numpy.
- DougBTX 10y ago
  Calling `cargo run` has made it easier for me to treat it as a scripting language since it combines the build and run steps in a single command. Good luck with it!
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
eutectic 10y ago
There's nothing that makes typed languages inherently more verbose; a Haskell script will tend to be substantially shorter than the equivalent Python. Rust gives you much more control over how your program runs, but this necessarily means paying a price in expressiveness.
- the_duke 10y ago
  Not type systems per se. But lack of garbage collection and the need for lifetime annotations for references and memory management with Box, Rc, Cell, Mutex, etc, combined with the type definitions makes Rust a lot more verbose than any dynamic language or even statically typed languages with GC like Scala / Go. That can't be avoided, but you have to be prepared. Rust code can be short and elegant, but it can also be tediously verbose.
- Manishearth 10y ago
  I didn't say typed languages are inherently more verbose. I said that a type system tends to make things more verbose (in some cases), e.g. having to bang out types in function signatures, etc. When writing small scripts you usually just write down what you want to happen, and it works. There's some extra mental/typing overhead in a typed language in many cases. For larger programs, this overhead isn't important since you get many other benefits, but for small scripts sometimes it can be problematic. It's not a hard-and-fast rule. It's something that I've experienced when trying to write small scripts in all kinds of typed languages. I keep going back to Python. For larger scripty things I've found typed languages to work just as well. > but this necessarily means paying a price in expressiveness. I don't think this is true. You can have higher level abstractions in Rust too.
- iopq 10y ago
  >a Haskell script will tend to be substantially shorter than the equivalent Python. someone offered a counter-example where a JSON parser had more lines of type definitions in Haskell than total lines of code in Python
  - codygman 10y ago
stymaar 10y ago
> We've often had feedback from Python/JS shops using Rust that learning Rust had the side effect of teaching them systems programming. I think that's pretty awesome. I'm a self-taught developer who only practiced memory-safe languages before and I never dared trying C because of its reputation of being too difficult. Rust taught me a lot of things about system programming I never though I will learn one day. A big thank you to the whole Rust team for that !

johnwheeler 10y ago

I guess I'm contrasting Python with my Java experience so far as banging out prototypes quickly. In Java, I don't think the type system gets in the way so much as its classpath. It's been a long time since I've done Java, but you'd have to get your jars in order and write an ant or maven script to do the compile/run steps (or at least a bash script). I like that with Python I can just do pip install whatever and begin using the module immediately in my main method. In Java, It's not standard practice to copy jars into the system classpath IIRC, so you'd have to copy them around every time you want to do something new. I need to investigate Rust's command line interface. Obviously, the more it can get close to python main.py vs. javac -cp foo/Bar.jar:baz/Quux.jar Main.java; java --classpath foo/Bar.jar:baz/Quux.jar Main the better it will be for this use case I mention. Thanks to both of you for responding!

Cyph0n 10y ago
I believe Rust's package manager, Cargo, is quite similar to pip in functionality. I haven't used it myself, so I could be wrong.
- steveklabnik 10y ago
  In some ways. It's also got the features of https://github.com/pypa/pipfile https://github.com/pypa/pipfile
- jdright 10y ago
  It is way better than pip on the sense it works everytime. pip is not painless. It is close but miss by little. Got to hate it because of numpy.
DougBTX 10y ago
Calling `cargo run` has made it easier for me to treat it as a scripting language since it combines the build and run steps in a single command. Good luck with it!
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

eutectic 10y ago

There's nothing that makes typed languages inherently more verbose; a Haskell script will tend to be substantially shorter than the equivalent Python. Rust gives you much more control over how your program runs, but this necessarily means paying a price in expressiveness.

the_duke 10y ago
Not type systems per se. But lack of garbage collection and the need for lifetime annotations for references and memory management with Box, Rc, Cell, Mutex, etc, combined with the type definitions makes Rust a lot more verbose than any dynamic language or even statically typed languages with GC like Scala / Go. That can't be avoided, but you have to be prepared. Rust code can be short and elegant, but it can also be tediously verbose.
Manishearth 10y ago
I didn't say typed languages are inherently more verbose. I said that a type system tends to make things more verbose (in some cases), e.g. having to bang out types in function signatures, etc. When writing small scripts you usually just write down what you want to happen, and it works. There's some extra mental/typing overhead in a typed language in many cases. For larger programs, this overhead isn't important since you get many other benefits, but for small scripts sometimes it can be problematic. It's not a hard-and-fast rule. It's something that I've experienced when trying to write small scripts in all kinds of typed languages. I keep going back to Python. For larger scripty things I've found typed languages to work just as well. > but this necessarily means paying a price in expressiveness. I don't think this is true. You can have higher level abstractions in Rust too.
iopq 10y ago
>a Haskell script will tend to be substantially shorter than the equivalent Python. someone offered a counter-example where a JSON parser had more lines of type definitions in Haskell than total lines of code in Python
- codygman 10y ago

stymaar 10y ago

> We've often had feedback from Python/JS shops using Rust that learning Rust had the side effect of teaching them systems programming. I think that's pretty awesome. I'm a self-taught developer who only practiced memory-safe languages before and I never dared trying C because of its reputation of being too difficult. Rust taught me a lot of things about system programming I never though I will learn one day. A big thank you to the whole Rust team for that !