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Speaking as someone who's poked around at the edges of Rust and always come away frustrated, the Rust world does need a "gentle introduction". But while this do

Speaking as someone who's poked around at the edges of Rust and always come away frustrated, the Rust world does need a "gentle introduction". But while this document seems to understand that need, it gets messy pretty fast. First of all, the introduction is all over the place, and poorly structured. There first section asks "Why Learn a new Programming Language?" but never answers that question (beyond "it's good mental exercise"), and follows it up with a section labelled "Where Rust Shines" that instead vaguely compares its memory management approach to C, calls C a "cowboy language", lists some of Rust's design components (not really even principles, just aspects of the language), and then starts giving advice for how to learn a programming language in general? What? Next is Hello World, and immediately "Rust is a curly-braces language with semicolons, C++-style comments and a main function - so far, so familiar." Well, to C++/Java/Javascript programmers, maybe it is familiar. That may well be a huge part of your intended audience, but this gloss of the basics is a big red flag about what assumptions might be made further on. "The exclamation mark indicates that this is a macro call. For C++ programmers, this can be a turn-off, since they are used to seriously stupid C macros" Whoa, there, cowboy! This is Hello World! Mentioning macros at all should probably be reserved for a little later, much less vaguely referencing the C preprocessor's bad repuation. Then the tangent about "OMG, you mean I have to type an exclamation point!?" is telling, though. At this point in a gentle introduction, you probably shouldn't be already alluding to the trash talking about the language. We aren't even past the first example. Further down the page, there's some big talk about how Rust favors explicitness, immediately followed by a discussion of how all the types are implicit and how confusing that can be. No mention of how you would remember that `f64` is the default floating point type... This is a worthy attempt and probably a good first draft. It's definitely a document that needs to exist, but in its current state, it's an gentle intro that only a disaffected C++ programmer could love. But please keep working on it--I need something like this.

conradev 9y ago
> No mention of how you would remember that `f64` is the default floating point type While the default is `f64`, it's only used if the type can't be inferred otherwise. If the author had changed the `f64` in the code sample to `f32`, type inference would have made the float literal to be an `f32` to match. That is a little complicated to explain, but the UX is such that literals generally "just work".
some_account 9y ago
I think you are a little unfair, expecting the guide to be towards complete beginners who would get confused by the language having curly braces or not... Rust is not a first language, it's a systems programming language. For previous programmers, the guide looks pretty good to me.
- cies 9y ago
  > Rust is not a first language, it's a systems programming language. Since when are sys prog langs not introductory languages anymore? I understand that using an dyn typed, interpreted, GCed lang is easier to get started with; but a whole (2) generation(s) of programmers has started with systems programming as their first experience, and I must say they seem well equipped for they jobs (maybe better so than those only exposed to Python/JS/Java/C# that leave higher educations nowadays). I see it as two different educational strategies: easy first vs hard first. And even when easy first was not an option back in the days, it does not mean that hard first is a bad option nowadays. A ref to this letter by Dijkstra may be on point (where he "discusses" the move from Scheme/Haskell to Python/Java in a university curriculum). https://chrisdone.com/posts/dijkstra-haskell-java https://chrisdone.com/posts/dijkstra-haskell-java
  - LandR 9y ago
    At my university course, we did C in the first year for all programming courses. THen onto C++ in year 2 onwards, but all the fundamentals were in C. Now that same course goes straight to Java as the introductory language, alongside html / css and javascript. Now any sort of low(er) level language is avoid until year 2 when they do a course on C / C++ Which seems ass backwards to me. I also see some developers come into the industry now who have never done anything lower level than Java or javascript at all
    - cies 9y ago
      I also thing that a systems programming language should be a must on for any CS degree. Just so you know how the software is written that underpins/compiles/provides-the-runtime-for what you are creating in a higher level language. It's the link between the software and the hardware that becomes truly evident in these languages.
stevedonovan 9y ago
"Disaffected C++ programmer" is altogether too accurate characterization of the author :). I've been removing references to other languages because (a) it's confusing (b) can be dismissive ("trash talking") - a language should stand on its own merits. So yes, a first draft. I try to express the paradox - that although Rust is about explicitness, type inference hides the actual concrete types chosen - `f64` and `i32` are examples. This needs to be made .. explicit. Personally I don't think it's possible for people with no prior exposure to programming to learn Rust effectively - unless they are exceptional (in the sense of being 'unusual'). This is because of certain hard constraints when learning a systems language that can't simplify computational models with a garbage collector. So, everyone comes from somewhere - but very different places. That's a challenge I haven't handled well enough (yet). Being gentle is hard. We have to identify the cliffs, and find alternative routes to the top. I really appreciate this criticism, by the way, since most of the feedback has been technical/typos up to now.
- mkesper 9y ago
  So the uses are pretty hardcore: operating systems, device drivers and embedded systems that might not even have an operating system I think this falls a little short. Think of tools like ripgrep which make use of C/C++-class speed with higher level language features.
  - stevedonovan 9y ago
    I'm a big fan of ripgrep, and there's been a minor revival of command-line tools exploiting the speed + higher-level + reusable-crates that Rust provides. So 'hardcore' is not correct. I've personally found it very effective at writing such tools - I struggle a little more, but debug less. Let's not forget server-side: I'm still recovering from the trauma of mysterious segfaults when doing C++ on the server, which can easily happen with multithreading and are an absolute bastard to diagnose and fix.
gkya 9y ago
Personally I really dislike documentation with this tone, written as if speaking to a minor, even when I was 11 yrs old and getting to know what programming is like.

conradev 9y ago

> No mention of how you would remember that `f64` is the default floating point type While the default is `f64`, it's only used if the type can't be inferred otherwise. If the author had changed the `f64` in the code sample to `f32`, type inference would have made the float literal to be an `f32` to match. That is a little complicated to explain, but the UX is such that literals generally "just work".

some_account 9y ago

I think you are a little unfair, expecting the guide to be towards complete beginners who would get confused by the language having curly braces or not... Rust is not a first language, it's a systems programming language. For previous programmers, the guide looks pretty good to me.

cies 9y ago
> Rust is not a first language, it's a systems programming language. Since when are sys prog langs not introductory languages anymore? I understand that using an dyn typed, interpreted, GCed lang is easier to get started with; but a whole (2) generation(s) of programmers has started with systems programming as their first experience, and I must say they seem well equipped for they jobs (maybe better so than those only exposed to Python/JS/Java/C# that leave higher educations nowadays). I see it as two different educational strategies: easy first vs hard first. And even when easy first was not an option back in the days, it does not mean that hard first is a bad option nowadays. A ref to this letter by Dijkstra may be on point (where he "discusses" the move from Scheme/Haskell to Python/Java in a university curriculum). https://chrisdone.com/posts/dijkstra-haskell-java https://chrisdone.com/posts/dijkstra-haskell-java
- LandR 9y ago
  At my university course, we did C in the first year for all programming courses. THen onto C++ in year 2 onwards, but all the fundamentals were in C. Now that same course goes straight to Java as the introductory language, alongside html / css and javascript. Now any sort of low(er) level language is avoid until year 2 when they do a course on C / C++ Which seems ass backwards to me. I also see some developers come into the industry now who have never done anything lower level than Java or javascript at all
  - cies 9y ago
    I also thing that a systems programming language should be a must on for any CS degree. Just so you know how the software is written that underpins/compiles/provides-the-runtime-for what you are creating in a higher level language. It's the link between the software and the hardware that becomes truly evident in these languages.

stevedonovan 9y ago

"Disaffected C++ programmer" is altogether too accurate characterization of the author :). I've been removing references to other languages because (a) it's confusing (b) can be dismissive ("trash talking") - a language should stand on its own merits. So yes, a first draft. I try to express the paradox - that although Rust is about explicitness, type inference hides the actual concrete types chosen - `f64` and `i32` are examples. This needs to be made .. explicit. Personally I don't think it's possible for people with no prior exposure to programming to learn Rust effectively - unless they are exceptional (in the sense of being 'unusual'). This is because of certain hard constraints when learning a systems language that can't simplify computational models with a garbage collector. So, everyone comes from somewhere - but very different places. That's a challenge I haven't handled well enough (yet). Being gentle is hard. We have to identify the cliffs, and find alternative routes to the top. I really appreciate this criticism, by the way, since most of the feedback has been technical/typos up to now.

mkesper 9y ago
So the uses are pretty hardcore: operating systems, device drivers and embedded systems that might not even have an operating system I think this falls a little short. Think of tools like ripgrep which make use of C/C++-class speed with higher level language features.
- stevedonovan 9y ago
  I'm a big fan of ripgrep, and there's been a minor revival of command-line tools exploiting the speed + higher-level + reusable-crates that Rust provides. So 'hardcore' is not correct. I've personally found it very effective at writing such tools - I struggle a little more, but debug less. Let's not forget server-side: I'm still recovering from the trauma of mysterious segfaults when doing C++ on the server, which can easily happen with multithreading and are an absolute bastard to diagnose and fix.

gkya 9y ago

Personally I really dislike documentation with this tone, written as if speaking to a minor, even when I was 11 yrs old and getting to know what programming is like.