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TLDR; the author likes rust and wanted to use it. The article reads like some dev's rationalizing what they want to do to the management. These types of things

TLDR; the author likes rust and wanted to use it. The article reads like some dev's rationalizing what they want to do to the management. These types of things are fine, but as a dev to a dev it is obvious that they just want to use this cool tech. Good for them.

throwaway884 9y ago
Fits in pretty well with the ongoing Rust agenda here in HN
- Tade0 9y ago
  To be fair the language is very pleasant to work with if you're a beginner, because the compiler seems to have been built around the concept of giving the most helpful (and polite!) messages possible. Never have I ever had a compiler tell me to "consider" changing some type declaration, because maybe, just maybe I was probably intending to do what it suggests all along. Also generally things you didn't write still compile and run. This is not a given in e.g. C/C++.
  - jhasse 9y ago
    > the compiler seems to have been built around the concept of giving the most helpful (and polite!) messages possible. I can't confirm that. I have already ran into compiler bugs and very very unhelpful error messages and I haven't really done that much in the language.
    - Tade0 9y ago
      Any specific messages you found to be unhelpful?
      - jhasse 9y ago
        This one for example: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/17164 https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/17164 There was another one, but I can't find the issue for it. I asked in IRC about it and it was fixed by adding &* before an expression. I didn't understand why ...
        icen 9y ago
        The &* thing is due to Deref coercions. The deference operator is a trait (Deref), which has an associated type that it dereferences to. This lets you do nice things, like dereference a Box<T> to just a T, and let the Box implementation figure out how to get you there. (It's also used on method calls using .) What you have is a reference to a type with a Deref-coercion to the type you want, but the compiler won't coerce under the reference for you, so you have to dereference and then reference it again, and then type inference can work out that you wanted to reference the coerced type.
  - MrBuddyCasino 9y ago
    Yes, they're trying very hard to be welcoming. This is markedly different from certain other programming communities and deserving of praise.
    - aaron-lebo 9y ago
      I mean, I've dropped in and out of the Ruby, Python, Javascript, Go, Clojure, Elixir etc communities and they all trying to be welcoming. It's kind of a given. It's rare to find the language community that isn't welcoming, and I think you'll find even that the most stubborn (lisp, Haskell) are very happy to have you and very happy to help new users. You probably have an argument that they are doing something different and right, but how markedly different is it really?
      - jerf 9y ago
        I agree that most programming communities are friendly and open. I can't help but notice that the same communities that have the reputation for being prickly are the ones that have the largest influx of people who come stomping in to the community, and one way or another try to turn the conversation to why everything the community is doing is wrong and stupid and how everything the community is doing needs to immediately be rewritten in accordance with their unambiguously correct opinions, even though they just joined the multi-year party ten minutes ago. No, I do not have some particular community in mind that I'm coyly not specifying when I say that; it is a pattern I've observed across quite a few communities.
- lloydatkinson 9y ago
  And /r/programming
- lmm 9y ago
  What kind of agenda could there be? Mozilla can't afford anything like as many people to push a language as Google can. Rust is pretty popular but the simplest explanation that fits the facts is that the language really is that good.
dullgiulio 9y ago
Even more, Go is excluded as (author's opinion) goleveldb is not as mature as RocksDB. Thus they should have used CGo, which is way suboptimal, slower etc. The title should have been: "C++11 or Rust? We chose Rust". In a greenfield project like this one seems to be, it's I choice I would approve. A personal note regarding future comments to this thread: I have had enough of negative advertising against Go in every language related thread. People who use Go are not stupid: they know the language limits and tradeoffs and are okay with them. Deal with it.
- edem 9y ago
  I haven't used Go or Rust but when I compare them I have a gut feeling that I'd be better off with Rust primarily because Go's build tools are not adequate. What do you think about this?
  - msl09 9y ago
    I haven't used Rust yet but I can tell you that the go tools are very robust. It's a very good language if you stay within it's optimal scope and do everything by the book, go tends to punish quite hard developers that try to be "create" with project layouts and best code practices and so on.
  - jimsmart 9y ago
    Well, your question is simply too open-ended: nobody can really answer that for you, as you give no indication whatsoever as to your potential use-cases. FWIW: I've been coding in Go for a few years now, for me and (perhaps more importantly) the kind of projects I choose to use it for, the build tools have been more than adequate. As with many things: it ultimately depends on what you're wanting to do, and what your expectations are.
    - lilbobbytables 9y ago
      What kinds of projects do you use it for?
alexnewman 9y ago
Nonsense. I love go and rust but I would never develop a database in a garbage collected language again. Btw I have done it a few times. Go is better than java but it still Can’t call into c as fast Has micro gc pauses which effect performance Doesn’t give me explicit control of the hardware Go is great for middleware but he authors go it right
lobster_johnson 9y ago
That's not a fair summary at all. For example, they explain why C++ was off the table. They also use Go for TiDB (which is the high-level distributed query engine layered on top of TiKV), but for TiKV they needed fast and easy access to C, which Go, in its current state, can never provide.

throwaway884 9y ago

Fits in pretty well with the ongoing Rust agenda here in HN

Tade0 9y ago
To be fair the language is very pleasant to work with if you're a beginner, because the compiler seems to have been built around the concept of giving the most helpful (and polite!) messages possible. Never have I ever had a compiler tell me to "consider" changing some type declaration, because maybe, just maybe I was probably intending to do what it suggests all along. Also generally things you didn't write still compile and run. This is not a given in e.g. C/C++.
- jhasse 9y ago
  > the compiler seems to have been built around the concept of giving the most helpful (and polite!) messages possible. I can't confirm that. I have already ran into compiler bugs and very very unhelpful error messages and I haven't really done that much in the language.
  - Tade0 9y ago
    Any specific messages you found to be unhelpful?
    - jhasse 9y ago
      This one for example: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/17164 https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/17164 There was another one, but I can't find the issue for it. I asked in IRC about it and it was fixed by adding &* before an expression. I didn't understand why ...
      - icen 9y ago
        The &* thing is due to Deref coercions. The deference operator is a trait (Deref), which has an associated type that it dereferences to. This lets you do nice things, like dereference a Box<T> to just a T, and let the Box implementation figure out how to get you there. (It's also used on method calls using .) What you have is a reference to a type with a Deref-coercion to the type you want, but the compiler won't coerce under the reference for you, so you have to dereference and then reference it again, and then type inference can work out that you wanted to reference the coerced type.
- MrBuddyCasino 9y ago
  Yes, they're trying very hard to be welcoming. This is markedly different from certain other programming communities and deserving of praise.
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    I mean, I've dropped in and out of the Ruby, Python, Javascript, Go, Clojure, Elixir etc communities and they all trying to be welcoming. It's kind of a given. It's rare to find the language community that isn't welcoming, and I think you'll find even that the most stubborn (lisp, Haskell) are very happy to have you and very happy to help new users. You probably have an argument that they are doing something different and right, but how markedly different is it really?
    - jerf 9y ago
      I agree that most programming communities are friendly and open. I can't help but notice that the same communities that have the reputation for being prickly are the ones that have the largest influx of people who come stomping in to the community, and one way or another try to turn the conversation to why everything the community is doing is wrong and stupid and how everything the community is doing needs to immediately be rewritten in accordance with their unambiguously correct opinions, even though they just joined the multi-year party ten minutes ago. No, I do not have some particular community in mind that I'm coyly not specifying when I say that; it is a pattern I've observed across quite a few communities.
lloydatkinson 9y ago
And /r/programming
lmm 9y ago
What kind of agenda could there be? Mozilla can't afford anything like as many people to push a language as Google can. Rust is pretty popular but the simplest explanation that fits the facts is that the language really is that good.

dullgiulio 9y ago

Even more, Go is excluded as (author's opinion) goleveldb is not as mature as RocksDB. Thus they should have used CGo, which is way suboptimal, slower etc. The title should have been: "C++11 or Rust? We chose Rust". In a greenfield project like this one seems to be, it's I choice I would approve. A personal note regarding future comments to this thread: I have had enough of negative advertising against Go in every language related thread. People who use Go are not stupid: they know the language limits and tradeoffs and are okay with them. Deal with it.

edem 9y ago
I haven't used Go or Rust but when I compare them I have a gut feeling that I'd be better off with Rust primarily because Go's build tools are not adequate. What do you think about this?
- msl09 9y ago
  I haven't used Rust yet but I can tell you that the go tools are very robust. It's a very good language if you stay within it's optimal scope and do everything by the book, go tends to punish quite hard developers that try to be "create" with project layouts and best code practices and so on.
- jimsmart 9y ago
  Well, your question is simply too open-ended: nobody can really answer that for you, as you give no indication whatsoever as to your potential use-cases. FWIW: I've been coding in Go for a few years now, for me and (perhaps more importantly) the kind of projects I choose to use it for, the build tools have been more than adequate. As with many things: it ultimately depends on what you're wanting to do, and what your expectations are.
  - lilbobbytables 9y ago
    What kinds of projects do you use it for?

alexnewman 9y ago

Nonsense. I love go and rust but I would never develop a database in a garbage collected language again. Btw I have done it a few times. Go is better than java but it still Can’t call into c as fast Has micro gc pauses which effect performance Doesn’t give me explicit control of the hardware Go is great for middleware but he authors go it right

lobster_johnson 9y ago

That's not a fair summary at all. For example, they explain why C++ was off the table. They also use Go for TiDB (which is the high-level distributed query engine layered on top of TiKV), but for TiKV they needed fast and easy access to C, which Go, in its current state, can never provide.