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Rust is becoming such a huge systems development language, that's so good to hear that finally the developers are getting better deal for performant application

Rust is becoming such a huge systems development language, that's so good to hear that finally the developers are getting better deal for performant applications instead of C/C++

hacker_9 10y ago
If you base your insight on HN articles, then yes it would appear that way.
sidlls 10y ago
Only in the HN bubble. Meanwhile, "in the wild," it's hard to find a person who does systems programming and has even heard of Rust, or if they have, that has given it serious consideration. It's too early and too immature a language for all the fawning it gets on HN. I think if the developers do it right they can snag enough mindshare among new developers that Rust will be a serious competitor to C and C++ in 10 years or so. Which is great, because I think it's a better language. But it isn't there yet.
- cmrdporcupine 10y ago
  I was programming in Python in 1996 and struggled to find anyone to pay me to work in it. Meanwhile it's now 2017 and it's only now a fully mainstream language for the last 5 years or so. It takes a while. (I lost interest in Python in early 2000s, and then it got popular. So if I lose interest in Rust it's bound to get popular.)
  - i336_ 10y ago
    Curious what language you generally turn to - or in the likely case of multiple languages, what you use each for. In particular, what do you turn to for the kinds of things others would use Python for?
  - golergka 10y ago
    Are you saying that Python wasn't a mainstream language in 2012?
- i336_ 10y ago
  I appreciate this sentiment; I've been very hesitant to explore Rust myself, it seems too new, too overhyped, and lacking in foundation (or, as you said, too immature) at this point for me to have absolute confidence in it, or at least the same level of absolute confidence I'd have in C. I'm definitely keeping an eye on it though, because if it keeps going at the same rate it has the potential to be great in 10 years. But at the same time, flurries of activity aren't universally positive: it becomes harder to filter out the low-quality contributions that introduce subtle bugs, and smaller/more strict teams have an easier time maintaining stringent quality controls. PHP and JavaScript very rarely segfault either. Sure, they use virtual machines (PHP's is non-JITed too!); and yes, their CPU and memory usage are comparatively astronomical. But I can only hope that Rust's memory-safety doesn't wind up attracting the same kind of unskilled language architecture "contributions" that PHP has, or wind up with an ecosystem as fragmented as Node's.
  - pcwalton 10y ago
    > But I can only hope that Rust's memory-safety doesn't wind up attracting the same kind of unskilled language architecture "contributions" that PHP has, or wind up with an ecosystem as fragmented as Node's. Going from "PHP has memory safety" to "memory safety causes the quality of code to decrease" is quite a leap. Haskell also has memory safety.
    - i336_ 10y ago
      You're right. Let me qualify. Haskell as an excellent example of a language that, by design, filters out probably many well-meaning individuals who don't have the requisite level of high-level skill. Languages like Java, BASIC, PHP, etc are easy to get started with, which means those languages attract all types. Perl is somewhat in this class too, along with C++ due to that language's widespread popularity. In PHP's case, the language's lack of inherent default-to-paranoia security settings has bitten it hard, because no real consideration was given to these phenomena (or apparently anything else, but that's a different story). It's a nuanced (social) issue, but solving the type safety problem does make it generally easier not to shoot your foot when you still don't know what you're doing. The hope is that the programmer steadily advances beyond the baby-steps/worsethanfailure.com stage - and doesn't build any large systems that are too big to rewrite before they're decent. Languages like Haskell, Lisp/Scheme, Erlang, C, assembly language, etc are generally difficult to do large-scale useful things with unless you've either studied the language a lot and/or already have programming experience.
- gcp 10y ago
  Meanwhile, "in the wild," it's hard to find a person who does systems programming and has even heard of Rust I agree that it's hard to find people who do systems programming, but those I know have mostly heard of Rust. There isn't much else of anything happening in that space aside from C++ iterations.
pjmlp 10y ago
While I am a big fan of Rust, that is not quite true. Rust still needs to improve its compile times and IDE related tooling, to make it appelative to the enterprise coder used to the comfort of Java / .NET tooling + C++ for lower level stuff.
miloshadzic 10y ago
I like the language but this amount of hype can only backfire.

Rust is becoming such a huge systems development language, that's so good to hear that finally the developers are getting better deal for performant applications instead of C/C++

hacker_9 10y ago

If you base your insight on HN articles, then yes it would appear that way.

sidlls 10y ago

Only in the HN bubble. Meanwhile, "in the wild," it's hard to find a person who does systems programming and has even heard of Rust, or if they have, that has given it serious consideration. It's too early and too immature a language for all the fawning it gets on HN. I think if the developers do it right they can snag enough mindshare among new developers that Rust will be a serious competitor to C and C++ in 10 years or so. Which is great, because I think it's a better language. But it isn't there yet.

cmrdporcupine 10y ago
I was programming in Python in 1996 and struggled to find anyone to pay me to work in it. Meanwhile it's now 2017 and it's only now a fully mainstream language for the last 5 years or so. It takes a while. (I lost interest in Python in early 2000s, and then it got popular. So if I lose interest in Rust it's bound to get popular.)
- i336_ 10y ago
  Curious what language you generally turn to - or in the likely case of multiple languages, what you use each for. In particular, what do you turn to for the kinds of things others would use Python for?
- golergka 10y ago
  Are you saying that Python wasn't a mainstream language in 2012?
i336_ 10y ago
I appreciate this sentiment; I've been very hesitant to explore Rust myself, it seems too new, too overhyped, and lacking in foundation (or, as you said, too immature) at this point for me to have absolute confidence in it, or at least the same level of absolute confidence I'd have in C. I'm definitely keeping an eye on it though, because if it keeps going at the same rate it has the potential to be great in 10 years. But at the same time, flurries of activity aren't universally positive: it becomes harder to filter out the low-quality contributions that introduce subtle bugs, and smaller/more strict teams have an easier time maintaining stringent quality controls. PHP and JavaScript very rarely segfault either. Sure, they use virtual machines (PHP's is non-JITed too!); and yes, their CPU and memory usage are comparatively astronomical. But I can only hope that Rust's memory-safety doesn't wind up attracting the same kind of unskilled language architecture "contributions" that PHP has, or wind up with an ecosystem as fragmented as Node's.
- pcwalton 10y ago
  > But I can only hope that Rust's memory-safety doesn't wind up attracting the same kind of unskilled language architecture "contributions" that PHP has, or wind up with an ecosystem as fragmented as Node's. Going from "PHP has memory safety" to "memory safety causes the quality of code to decrease" is quite a leap. Haskell also has memory safety.
  - i336_ 10y ago
    You're right. Let me qualify. Haskell as an excellent example of a language that, by design, filters out probably many well-meaning individuals who don't have the requisite level of high-level skill. Languages like Java, BASIC, PHP, etc are easy to get started with, which means those languages attract all types. Perl is somewhat in this class too, along with C++ due to that language's widespread popularity. In PHP's case, the language's lack of inherent default-to-paranoia security settings has bitten it hard, because no real consideration was given to these phenomena (or apparently anything else, but that's a different story). It's a nuanced (social) issue, but solving the type safety problem does make it generally easier not to shoot your foot when you still don't know what you're doing. The hope is that the programmer steadily advances beyond the baby-steps/worsethanfailure.com stage - and doesn't build any large systems that are too big to rewrite before they're decent. Languages like Haskell, Lisp/Scheme, Erlang, C, assembly language, etc are generally difficult to do large-scale useful things with unless you've either studied the language a lot and/or already have programming experience.
gcp 10y ago
Meanwhile, "in the wild," it's hard to find a person who does systems programming and has even heard of Rust I agree that it's hard to find people who do systems programming, but those I know have mostly heard of Rust. There isn't much else of anything happening in that space aside from C++ iterations.

pjmlp 10y ago

While I am a big fan of Rust, that is not quite true. Rust still needs to improve its compile times and IDE related tooling, to make it appelative to the enterprise coder used to the comfort of Java / .NET tooling + C++ for lower level stuff.

miloshadzic 10y ago

I like the language but this amount of hype can only backfire.