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Rust is trying to solve well known problems. What is unique about rust is how it solves them. To emphasize that, what is required is a document that clearly exp
by newsat13 10y ago
Rust is trying to solve well known problems. What is unique about rust is how it solves them. To emphasize that, what is required is a document that clearly explain how it's done and how the syntax of Rust is helping the cause.
Instead the tutorial is filled with printf! (Saying it's a macro. What is ! doing there? Why is it needed) and then &mut Str (I already noted Str is mutable, why do I need mut again). The tutorial comes across as very apologetic (using phrases like it's complex, will read later etc) instead of being confident about the issues being solved.
What I find lacking is a document that can explains quickly what is being solved, how it's being solved and general overview of the language. I don't know of any language that cannot do this. Nobody is picking Rust as the first language. One should just assume that people already know C/C++/Java etc coming to learn rust.
I will appreciate any links to help my Rust journey (please no books!).
- steveklabnik 10y agoWhich tutorial are you referring to?
- eridius 10y agoWhy no books? You're explicitly rejecting the most useful documentation there is. Maybe you mean no printed books by third parties, which would be a reasonable restriction, but https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ is online and written by people involved in the rust language development.
- steveklabnik 10y ago... and http://rust-lang.github.io/book/ http://rust-lang.github.io/book/ is even better!
- eridius 10y agoIs that the new version of the book? I was wondering where that was. I grabbed my link from rust-lang.org. When will the new book take its place?
- steveklabnik 10y agoYes, this is the second edition. My coauthor will not allow me to prognosticate on dates :)
- eridius 10y agoThat's understandable, as long as you don't procrastinate either ;)
- carols10cents 10y ago:)
- newsat13 10y agoI don't have the patience to read a book about a programming language. What I need is crisp insights and honestly the book you linked is just way too time consuming. I just need the essence and I will learn as I dig deeper into the language. IMO, Rust in 2017 is not going to be a first language for anyone. Just put a document that helps people who already know C/C++ very well. I could very well have misunderstood the goal of Rust because that might explain why such a doc doesn't exist.
- eridius 10y agoI have to admit, I find it a little amusing that you're saying that as a C++ programmer you don't have the patience to read a (relatively short) book, given that learning C++ itself requires reading arguably many books, each of which are much larger than the Rust book.
- newsat13 10y agoFWIW, learning C++ was not fun.
- Manishearth 10y ago> One should just assume that people already know C/C++/Java etc coming to learn rust. It's not so simple. People coming from different languages know different things. Folks coming from JS may not understand the stack or how to operate in a non-GCd environment. Folks coming from C may not understand what a closure is. Folks may not come from a language with generics. Folks may not come from a language with a static type system. All this piles up, and you effectively have to teach all of it if you want a document that anyone can use to learn Rust. The "guessing game" tutorial is only an intro to the language. It can't explain many things without getting too large, and it's part of the book, so it expects you to continue. You don't need to read the whole book, just the first few chapters (and each chapter is pretty small, not the size of a "chapter" in typical physical programming book). If you want a different way to learn Rust, try http://rustbyexample.com/index.html http://rustbyexample.com/index.html