4 ms·

TBH it's getting a bit much at this point. The rust advocates here (not sure if they're paid or just fanboys) really need to tone it down. The hyperbole, and th

TBH it's getting a bit much at this point. The rust advocates here (not sure if they're paid or just fanboys) really need to tone it down. The hyperbole, and the constant "rust solves this unrelated problem, and has no flaws!" is beginning to grate. I've coded in it a bit and it seems like cool language, they get a lot right and have some new and interesting ideas. But it's not a panacea (or indeed "salvation" as one recent blog post put it) for everything wrong in software. We don't need to all immediately re-write everything we do rust. Not everything new needs to be written in rust. And your re-writes of programs that have already been written in other languages and work well aren't that compelling. If you like rust, then write some new, interesting and useful software in the language, where what language it's written in isn't the main selling point. For example, I love the look of this http://nickel.rs/ http://nickel.rs/. TL;DR - the corrosive nature of rust advocates on HN is starting to eat away at my patience, and I am tired of having to galvanize against them and their absurd claims.

burntsushi 10y ago
Yes, we had a recent explosion of marketing materials that went a little over the top. That's OK. It happens. I don't think anyone really believes Rust solves every problem, so I think you're attacking a straw man. There are plenty of trade offs at play. But the problems we believe it does solve makes it exciting for a lot of us (and for perspective users).
- adiabatty 10y ago
  Plus it's not really the fault of Rust developers if https://blog.ntpsec.org/2017/01/03/getting-past-c.html https://blog.ntpsec.org/2017/01/03/getting-past-c.html gets to the front page; that's not really marketing material for the language.
hacker_9 10y ago
As a counter, stuff is posted to new every minute, but 90% of it doesn't reach the front page. In order to reach the front, you often have to do make up silly titles such as the ones you mentioned, which cause an emotional response (good or bad, as long as it gets clicks). HN also has a problem with brigading, which is why you see some utterly random articles make it to the top too. Sadly not much you can do about this, but you could try browsing /r/programming or elsewhere instead.
- thesmallestcat 10y ago
  > HN also has a problem with brigading More than once as an employee I've been asked to upvote a company post. Obviously I immediately flagged said posts.
dikaiosune 10y ago
> the corrosive nature of rust Fantastic! More seriously, I'm not sure who you mean by the paid rust advocates here. There are some core developers who work for Mozilla, but I can't imagine that a Rust-using company or individual would spend salary on an HN advocate rather than paying someone to work on the compiler or ecosystem.
- thesmallestcat 10y ago
  You'd be mistaken. steveklabnik is a hired Rust evangelist who also writes docs. > Wherever there is discussion about Rust to be found, be it IRC, the RFCs repo, or Reddit/HackerNews, you can be sure to find a comment or two from Steve there, explaining and clarifying the situation. https://blog.rust-lang.org/2014/12/12/Core-Team.html https://blog.rust-lang.org/2014/12/12/Core-Team.html
  - steveklabnik 10y ago
    To be clear, my job description is "doc writer". I've been posting a ton on HN for _years_, and advocating for Rust before I ever had a job working on it. At the time that post was written, I was a contractor, and it wasn't clear if I was ever going to stay on with Mozilla; historically, I've told everyone this was a short-term gig, though my feelings on that have been changing a bit. Regardless of that, if you ever hear me saying Rust is a "panacea" or "immediately re-write everything [in Rust]", call me out on it. I don't agree with either of those positions. I want people to accurately understand what's going on, not mislead them. (I _do_ want to see more people using Rust, because I love it, but not everyone will also love Rust, and that's totally fine.)
    - eropple 10y ago
      Having idled around the same tech watering holes as you have for years, I'd think they'd have to make a significant effort to keep you from talking about it. ;)
  - dikaiosune 10y ago
    > There are some core developers who work for Mozilla
grey-area 10y ago
Hello, I posted this because it looked interesting. I'm not a Rust advocate (I prefer GC-languages personally), the WebAssembly angle and different languages using it as a compilation target was more interesting than Rust specifically.
- lacampbell 10y ago
  Right, sorry to hijack the thread, or imply you were one of the people I was talking about. What are your general thoughts on web assembly? I am really optimistic about it - improving client side performance with a fast IR format will really open up a lot of doors, and make the web a much more viable platform for applications. I do note that many similar attempts have been made in the past though.
Manishearth 10y ago
Like burntsushi I feel you're attacking a straw man here. Or, you're attacking specifically the "salvation" article which was a bit hyperbolic on purpose (in which case you're mostly off topic in this thread) > the constant "rust solves this unrelated problem, and has no flaws!" Where do you see that? > But it's not a panacea for everything wrong in software Nobody says that. Folks generally focus on the memory safety and thread safety bits. The salvation article did say that Rust can solve all of the problems in software caused by C, which was hyperbolic (I wasn't really fond of that part either), but that's the only instance in a blog post or comment that I can recall this being said recently. There doesn't seem to be a trend as you see. > We don't need to all immediately re-write everything we do rust. Not everything new needs to be written in rust. Nobody says that either. If anything, I've seen folks (especially in /r/rust) advocating caution when asked about porting software to Rust. > If you like rust, then write some new, interesting and useful software in the language, where what language it's written in isn't the main selling point. There's a lot of this all over the rust community. Redox has reasons for existing other than Rust (https://doc.redox-os.org/book/introduction/why_redox.html https://doc.redox-os.org/book/introduction/why_redox.html). Servo similarly has a wide variety of interesting bits -- some of which have been enabled by Rust but aren't interesting because of Rust. Webrender in particular is something that could have been done without Rust. Servo's layout and style systems are pretty revolutionary, because of the way they work. Ripgrep (http://blog.burntsushi.net/ripgrep/ http://blog.burntsushi.net/ripgrep/) probably could have been implemented in Go and perhaps still win on some of the benchmarks; it's interesting because of the tricks that burntsushi used. https://github.com/google/xi-editor https://github.com/google/xi-editor is also interesting, though incomplete.
- detaro 10y ago
  There certainly was a phase where many threads about basic software (curl-type stuff, init systems, ...) had comments that felt like endless repeats of "it is 2016, stop writing new C code and just use Rust", which I personally found annoying. I either tuned it out or it has gotten better recently, and I don't think it was a organized effort, just a common pattern.
  - 10y ago
benjismith 10y ago
I enjoy reading about rust. I don't know the language (yet), but I've been keeping my eye on it for a few years, and I think it's going to be fantastic once it stabilizes and gets improved tooling. I especially welcome the possibility of using a safe language like rust for web development, instead of writing more dreadful javascript...
- Manishearth 10y ago
  Note that Rust is stable now. IDE tooling and stuff isn't there yet (soon?!), and there are other reasons why you may not use Rust, but it is stable. After 1.0 the Rust releases have been stable, with the stability checked against the entire ecosystem on crates.io. https://blog.rust-lang.org/2014/10/30/Stability.html https://blog.rust-lang.org/2014/10/30/Stability.html
  - lacampbell 10y ago
    > Note that Rust is stable now. Is it? Unstable (io #27802) : the semantics of a partial read/write of where errors happen is currently unclear and may change https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/io/trait.Read.html#method.chars https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/io/trait.Read.html#method.char... I'm curious about what "stable" means to rust advocates, because it doesn't mean the same thing to the rest of us. I frequently see rust pushers debating this point with people as well. If your standard library isn't finished, it's very misleading to say rust is stable.
    - steveklabnik 10y ago
      That method is not yet available in stable Rust, because it's unstable. If you run that example on stable Rust, you'll see error[E0554]: #[feature] may not be used on the stable release channel > isn't finished I wrote about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13277438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13277438 TL;DR: stuff starts out being added, sits in unstable for a while, then makes it to stable. No software is ever finished. Stability is not the absence of change; stability is the absence of things breaking. > I'm curious about what "stable" means to rust advocates You should read the blog post in the parent comment, as it explains, at length.
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pcwalton 10y ago
> And your re-writes of programs that have already been written in other languages and work well aren't that compelling. Try ripgrep.
- tatterdemalion 10y ago
  I didn't know how much time I spent waiting for grep until I tried ripgrep!
deleted 10y ago
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burntsushi 10y ago

Yes, we had a recent explosion of marketing materials that went a little over the top. That's OK. It happens. I don't think anyone really believes Rust solves every problem, so I think you're attacking a straw man. There are plenty of trade offs at play. But the problems we believe it does solve makes it exciting for a lot of us (and for perspective users).

adiabatty 10y ago
Plus it's not really the fault of Rust developers if https://blog.ntpsec.org/2017/01/03/getting-past-c.html https://blog.ntpsec.org/2017/01/03/getting-past-c.html gets to the front page; that's not really marketing material for the language.

hacker_9 10y ago

As a counter, stuff is posted to new every minute, but 90% of it doesn't reach the front page. In order to reach the front, you often have to do make up silly titles such as the ones you mentioned, which cause an emotional response (good or bad, as long as it gets clicks). HN also has a problem with brigading, which is why you see some utterly random articles make it to the top too. Sadly not much you can do about this, but you could try browsing /r/programming or elsewhere instead.

thesmallestcat 10y ago
> HN also has a problem with brigading More than once as an employee I've been asked to upvote a company post. Obviously I immediately flagged said posts.

dikaiosune 10y ago

> the corrosive nature of rust Fantastic! More seriously, I'm not sure who you mean by the paid rust advocates here. There are some core developers who work for Mozilla, but I can't imagine that a Rust-using company or individual would spend salary on an HN advocate rather than paying someone to work on the compiler or ecosystem.

thesmallestcat 10y ago
You'd be mistaken. steveklabnik is a hired Rust evangelist who also writes docs. > Wherever there is discussion about Rust to be found, be it IRC, the RFCs repo, or Reddit/HackerNews, you can be sure to find a comment or two from Steve there, explaining and clarifying the situation. https://blog.rust-lang.org/2014/12/12/Core-Team.html https://blog.rust-lang.org/2014/12/12/Core-Team.html
- steveklabnik 10y ago
  To be clear, my job description is "doc writer". I've been posting a ton on HN for _years_, and advocating for Rust before I ever had a job working on it. At the time that post was written, I was a contractor, and it wasn't clear if I was ever going to stay on with Mozilla; historically, I've told everyone this was a short-term gig, though my feelings on that have been changing a bit. Regardless of that, if you ever hear me saying Rust is a "panacea" or "immediately re-write everything [in Rust]", call me out on it. I don't agree with either of those positions. I want people to accurately understand what's going on, not mislead them. (I _do_ want to see more people using Rust, because I love it, but not everyone will also love Rust, and that's totally fine.)
  - eropple 10y ago
    Having idled around the same tech watering holes as you have for years, I'd think they'd have to make a significant effort to keep you from talking about it. ;)
- dikaiosune 10y ago
  > There are some core developers who work for Mozilla

grey-area 10y ago

Hello, I posted this because it looked interesting. I'm not a Rust advocate (I prefer GC-languages personally), the WebAssembly angle and different languages using it as a compilation target was more interesting than Rust specifically.

lacampbell 10y ago
Right, sorry to hijack the thread, or imply you were one of the people I was talking about. What are your general thoughts on web assembly? I am really optimistic about it - improving client side performance with a fast IR format will really open up a lot of doors, and make the web a much more viable platform for applications. I do note that many similar attempts have been made in the past though.

Manishearth 10y ago

Like burntsushi I feel you're attacking a straw man here. Or, you're attacking specifically the "salvation" article which was a bit hyperbolic on purpose (in which case you're mostly off topic in this thread) > the constant "rust solves this unrelated problem, and has no flaws!" Where do you see that? > But it's not a panacea for everything wrong in software Nobody says that. Folks generally focus on the memory safety and thread safety bits. The salvation article did say that Rust can solve all of the problems in software caused by C, which was hyperbolic (I wasn't really fond of that part either), but that's the only instance in a blog post or comment that I can recall this being said recently. There doesn't seem to be a trend as you see. > We don't need to all immediately re-write everything we do rust. Not everything new needs to be written in rust. Nobody says that either. If anything, I've seen folks (especially in /r/rust) advocating caution when asked about porting software to Rust. > If you like rust, then write some new, interesting and useful software in the language, where what language it's written in isn't the main selling point. There's a lot of this all over the rust community. Redox has reasons for existing other than Rust (https://doc.redox-os.org/book/introduction/why_redox.html https://doc.redox-os.org/book/introduction/why_redox.html). Servo similarly has a wide variety of interesting bits -- some of which have been enabled by Rust but aren't interesting because of Rust. Webrender in particular is something that could have been done without Rust. Servo's layout and style systems are pretty revolutionary, because of the way they work. Ripgrep (http://blog.burntsushi.net/ripgrep/ http://blog.burntsushi.net/ripgrep/) probably could have been implemented in Go and perhaps still win on some of the benchmarks; it's interesting because of the tricks that burntsushi used. https://github.com/google/xi-editor https://github.com/google/xi-editor is also interesting, though incomplete.

detaro 10y ago
There certainly was a phase where many threads about basic software (curl-type stuff, init systems, ...) had comments that felt like endless repeats of "it is 2016, stop writing new C code and just use Rust", which I personally found annoying. I either tuned it out or it has gotten better recently, and I don't think it was a organized effort, just a common pattern.
- 10y ago

benjismith 10y ago

I enjoy reading about rust. I don't know the language (yet), but I've been keeping my eye on it for a few years, and I think it's going to be fantastic once it stabilizes and gets improved tooling. I especially welcome the possibility of using a safe language like rust for web development, instead of writing more dreadful javascript...

Manishearth 10y ago
Note that Rust is stable now. IDE tooling and stuff isn't there yet (soon?!), and there are other reasons why you may not use Rust, but it is stable. After 1.0 the Rust releases have been stable, with the stability checked against the entire ecosystem on crates.io. https://blog.rust-lang.org/2014/10/30/Stability.html https://blog.rust-lang.org/2014/10/30/Stability.html
- lacampbell 10y ago
  > Note that Rust is stable now. Is it? Unstable (io #27802) : the semantics of a partial read/write of where errors happen is currently unclear and may change https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/io/trait.Read.html#method.chars https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/io/trait.Read.html#method.char... I'm curious about what "stable" means to rust advocates, because it doesn't mean the same thing to the rest of us. I frequently see rust pushers debating this point with people as well. If your standard library isn't finished, it's very misleading to say rust is stable.
  - steveklabnik 10y ago
    That method is not yet available in stable Rust, because it's unstable. If you run that example on stable Rust, you'll see error[E0554]: #[feature] may not be used on the stable release channel > isn't finished I wrote about this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13277438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13277438 TL;DR: stuff starts out being added, sits in unstable for a while, then makes it to stable. No software is ever finished. Stability is not the absence of change; stability is the absence of things breaking. > I'm curious about what "stable" means to rust advocates You should read the blog post in the parent comment, as it explains, at length.

deleted 10y ago

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pcwalton 10y ago

> And your re-writes of programs that have already been written in other languages and work well aren't that compelling. Try ripgrep.

tatterdemalion 10y ago
I didn't know how much time I spent waiting for grep until I tried ripgrep!

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]