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#-#-# for Steve only "you can build whatever want on top of it" is a flashy way to say that "rust can't do that" in this instance. I suspect rust adoption wou

by qop 8y ago

#-#-# for Steve only "you can build whatever want on top of it" is a flashy way to say that "rust can't do that" in this instance. I suspect rust adoption would be much more effective if it wasn't presented as a panacea-like solution (it isnt) that the entirety of computer science has always dreamed of (it hasn't) and is ready to be used to write literally everything on earth in. The hubris of the rust team empowers projects like zig, which are clearly communicating what their offering can and cannot do. You're influential in the rust microcosm, why not communicate this? Why not build a campaign directly from the utility rust is actually presenting and not the pseudo-philosophical utility that mozilla erroneously assigns to rust? For a team that hacks bits and registers all day, I'm shocked how far rust evangelism has deviated from just the simple truth of the code. I wanted to share this with you privately, but I couldn't find you on any platform I feel comfortable using, and for some reason the best tech news aggregator in the world still doesn't do privmsg yet, so I hope I can ask you to take the perspective if what I'm trying to communicate here and not the "why you talking so loud?!" perspective. I see these little rust-isms where a defect or some aspect of rust is manipulated in a way as to empower it rather than illustrate the technical reality of it. Rust not having the ability to deal with failed allocation is or will be a show stopper for somebody, somewhere, eventually. It should be portrayed as such (or fixed and loudly announced) rather than saying, "oh, build whatever you want on top of that behavior" as if it's some brilliant idea. Disclaimer: I'm not a rust contributor. Disdisclaimer: there's love in my heart for rust but the marketing is reaching counterintelligence levels of euphemism and misdirextion and I'm confident that you have the influence and awareness to begin to fix this in the rustverse

dbaupp 8y ago
> "you can build whatever want on top of it" is a flashy way to say that "rust can't do that" in this instance. It most definitely is not. "It" in "on top of it" refers to the language itself and the "core" subset of "std", which designed to cater for situations without any OS-level allocation at all, not the "std"s library's handling of OOM. Given that Rust can work without allocation, it can work with custom allocation-failure handling too: as a minimal proof, start with core only (no std) and create custom Box and Vec types (this probably isn't the best path, but it shows it is possible). > I suspect rust adoption would be much more effective if it wasn't presented as a panacea-like solution (it isnt) that the entirety of computer science has always dreamed of (it hasn't) and is ready to be used to write literally everything on earth in. > The hubris of the rust team empowers projects like zig, which are clearly communicating what their offering can and cannot do. The Rust team is good at clearly communicating the boundaries of Rust. Others may misinterpret that/be over-enthusiastic, but they're often called out (even by members of the Rust team) when it is noticed.
- steveklabnik 8y ago
  Yes, thank you. To your parent, I know you said this was for me only, but this is what I’d say. Well, with one more addition; you can see me doing exactly what you say in this very thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17187648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17187648 I quite often tell people that Rust is not a panacea, or to not use it if it doesn’t fit their use-case: https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/8mp7in/comment/dzr3eot https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/8mp7in/comment/dzr3eot

by qop 8y ago

dbaupp 8y ago

> "you can build whatever want on top of it" is a flashy way to say that "rust can't do that" in this instance. It most definitely is not. "It" in "on top of it" refers to the language itself and the "core" subset of "std", which designed to cater for situations without any OS-level allocation at all, not the "std"s library's handling of OOM. Given that Rust can work without allocation, it can work with custom allocation-failure handling too: as a minimal proof, start with core only (no std) and create custom Box and Vec types (this probably isn't the best path, but it shows it is possible). > I suspect rust adoption would be much more effective if it wasn't presented as a panacea-like solution (it isnt) that the entirety of computer science has always dreamed of (it hasn't) and is ready to be used to write literally everything on earth in. > The hubris of the rust team empowers projects like zig, which are clearly communicating what their offering can and cannot do. The Rust team is good at clearly communicating the boundaries of Rust. Others may misinterpret that/be over-enthusiastic, but they're often called out (even by members of the Rust team) when it is noticed.

steveklabnik 8y ago
Yes, thank you. To your parent, I know you said this was for me only, but this is what I’d say. Well, with one more addition; you can see me doing exactly what you say in this very thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17187648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17187648 I quite often tell people that Rust is not a panacea, or to not use it if it doesn’t fit their use-case: https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/8mp7in/comment/dzr3eot https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/8mp7in/comment/dzr3eot