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Rust sucks because it takes several weeks to become proficient in its use. I do not intend this to be advocacy for or against Rust, but your observation is tru

Rust sucks because it takes several weeks to become proficient in its use. I do not intend this to be advocacy for or against Rust, but your observation is true and also indicative of a profound, self-defeating issue with this industry: Intelligent, educated developers often chose the option that gives the quickest gratification, even if it causes significant long term problems. PHP is an example. So is MongoDB (and indeed many document stores). A lot of shops ended up becoming "Microsoft shops" only because it was easy to install things from the MSDN discs. Etc. Most projects of significance encompass tens to hundreds of thousands of hours of work. A small cost upfront is usually insignificant.

arvinsim 10y ago
> I do not intend this to be advocacy for or against Rust, but your observation is true and also indicative of a profound, self-defeating issue with this industry: Intelligent, educated developers often chose the option that gives the quickest gratification, even if it causes significant long term problems. PHP is an example. So is MongoDB (and indeed many document stores). A lot of shops ended up becoming "Microsoft shops" only because it was easy to install things from the MSDN discs. Etc. It really is about tradeoffs. If developers have infinite time and money, I am pretty sure that everyone would ditch those 'ugly' languages. But we are not living in this utopia. There are time and money constraints that developers have little or no control over. > Most projects of significance encompass tens to hundreds of thousands of hours of work. A small cost upfront is usually insignificant. Unfortunately, not all those who mandate what stack to use know this
- innocentoldguy 10y ago
  > It really is about tradeoffs. If developers have infinite time and money, I am pretty sure that everyone would ditch those 'ugly' languages. But we are not living in this utopia. There are time and money constraints that developers have little or no control over. That's the thing though, if spending two or three weeks right now to learn Rust will save you months of technical debt and futzing around with crappy standard libraries and language weaknesses in the future, then the prudent move would be to ditch the weak language in favor of Rust, regardless of its learning curve, since the end result will be a significant net-positive. I also think this is a copout. Take Java, for instance. It was new and different when it came out in the 90s, but companies all over the map were willing not only to spend weeks learning it, but also months (or years) re-writing all their crap in Java, even though it was a dismal failure in almost every instance (e.g. Java-Netware, Java-WordPerfect, Java-VisualStudio, etc.)
  - btschaegg 10y ago
    > That's the thing though, if spending two or three weeks right now to learn Rust will save you months of technical debt and futzing around with crappy standard libraries and language weaknesses in the future, then the prudent move would be to ditch the weak language in favor of Rust, regardless of its learning curve, since the end result will be a significant net-positive. This. There's a really good point on tradeoffs in Rich Hickey's talk on "hammock driven development": "Most developers use the word 'tradeoff' to describe parts of their software that suck." If you haven't evaluated the alternatives, it's not a tradeoff. And if you are sacrificing long term maintainability for two weeks of productivity, you most certainly haven't thought it through.
deleted 10y ago
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arvinsim 10y ago

> I do not intend this to be advocacy for or against Rust, but your observation is true and also indicative of a profound, self-defeating issue with this industry: Intelligent, educated developers often chose the option that gives the quickest gratification, even if it causes significant long term problems. PHP is an example. So is MongoDB (and indeed many document stores). A lot of shops ended up becoming "Microsoft shops" only because it was easy to install things from the MSDN discs. Etc. It really is about tradeoffs. If developers have infinite time and money, I am pretty sure that everyone would ditch those 'ugly' languages. But we are not living in this utopia. There are time and money constraints that developers have little or no control over. > Most projects of significance encompass tens to hundreds of thousands of hours of work. A small cost upfront is usually insignificant. Unfortunately, not all those who mandate what stack to use know this

innocentoldguy 10y ago
> It really is about tradeoffs. If developers have infinite time and money, I am pretty sure that everyone would ditch those 'ugly' languages. But we are not living in this utopia. There are time and money constraints that developers have little or no control over. That's the thing though, if spending two or three weeks right now to learn Rust will save you months of technical debt and futzing around with crappy standard libraries and language weaknesses in the future, then the prudent move would be to ditch the weak language in favor of Rust, regardless of its learning curve, since the end result will be a significant net-positive. I also think this is a copout. Take Java, for instance. It was new and different when it came out in the 90s, but companies all over the map were willing not only to spend weeks learning it, but also months (or years) re-writing all their crap in Java, even though it was a dismal failure in almost every instance (e.g. Java-Netware, Java-WordPerfect, Java-VisualStudio, etc.)
- btschaegg 10y ago
  > That's the thing though, if spending two or three weeks right now to learn Rust will save you months of technical debt and futzing around with crappy standard libraries and language weaknesses in the future, then the prudent move would be to ditch the weak language in favor of Rust, regardless of its learning curve, since the end result will be a significant net-positive. This. There's a really good point on tradeoffs in Rich Hickey's talk on "hammock driven development": "Most developers use the word 'tradeoff' to describe parts of their software that suck." If you haven't evaluated the alternatives, it's not a tradeoff. And if you are sacrificing long term maintainability for two weeks of productivity, you most certainly haven't thought it through.

deleted 10y ago

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