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A personal opinion: The old site said to me "Here's a programming language made by programmers for programmers.". The new site says to me "Here's a programmin

A personal opinion: The old site said to me "Here's a programming language made by programmers for programmers.". The new site says to me "Here's a programming language which has a marketing team.". The "Featuring" bullet list was an excellent way of calling out what makes Rust distinctive, and I felt I could trust what it said to be basically true. But claims like "empowers everyone to become a systems programmer" or "Rust has great documentation", coming from the language's own designers, convey little information: they might be an over-optimistic view. (Or, in the language of the blog post: I trust them to tell me what a fireflower is. I'd rather judge for myself whether I believe that it will turn me into Fire Mario.)

ajkjk 8y ago
I strongly agree. The list of features on the old list is very meaningful to a C programmer who will recognize all of those things as things would love to use every day. Its underlying message is "we're technical nerds and we made a thing that you'll like". The new version is corporate-speak that won't appeal to.. anyone? Its underlying message is "we're trying to get you to like us and we studied how to do this". But, like, what's the point of a programming language's website anyway? Most people who visit the site will probably be at least vaguely aware of it. You use it if recommendations online, code samples, etc are compelling, and if the early adoption story (examples and motivations) are compelling. All I ever want is a list of examples up front and center. The more words I have to get through that aren't literal actual examples that show both what the language looks like and what differentiates it... the more exhausting the whole experience.
- rhn_mk1 8y ago
  I totally agree. As a coder, whenever I visit a website of a project I'm interested in, I'm looking for key technical features to convince me it's the right tool for the job, or that it offers an unique property tht I never even thought about. That's usually conveyed in a list of bullet points, and a couple of examples. I can rarely find it though. I wasn't quite able to grasp why, and I kind of accepted this as how it is. But after seeing the two revisions side by side, I finally get it! The important, unique information found in the old version. The majority of project web sites are closer to the new version, which hides the complexity behind colorful "screens" and headlines which are short, friendly, distracting, and very, very bland, delivering the same "simplicity, performance, productivity" message regardless of the project. Can you guess what Docker does (or does especially well) just based on the website? [0] I've learned to cut the crap and go straight to the "about" page to understand the distinct advantages in a more condensed form, but that seems to be missing from the redesign. [0] https://www.docker.com/ https://www.docker.com/
  - throwawaylolx 8y ago
    >As a coder Obviously the website is no longer targeted at coders: the Rust Team seems to target managers to push adoption. To me, it looks like a corporation that has to report user growth every quarter, so they start employing harmful UX to desperately try to push the numbers up.
  - peterkelly 8y ago
    I often find myself going to the Wikipedia page of a project to find out what it really is because the project's own website fails to do so.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - anoncake 8y ago
    Whatever Docker is, it's Windows-only. Apparently.
- ttsda 8y ago
  The point of the old website was convincing developers to use Rust. It seems the point of the new one is convincing the higher ups to let their developers use Rust.
  - speedplane 8y ago
    I have been using Google Cloud for many years now. I used it because I thought it was technically superior than AWS and several others. However, for years, many mocked it as a second-tier cloud provider that wasn't "serious". Then Google brought on Diane Green. As a technical nerd, I wasn't too pleased. Their nerdy How-To articles morphed into Enterprise Success Stories. It was irritating, but it also raised Google-Cloud to a "serious" cloud provider. Even though Rust's marketing pivot will likely irritate many, it's likely better for it long term.
    - ttsda 8y ago
      Agreed. As much as I liked the old site I think the rust team made the right call on this one. Perhaps the old page could be moved somewhere close to the language docs instead of being removed, but I'm confident whoever is in charge has given this much more thought than I could ever give (as well as most of the commenters here).
      - speedplane 8y ago
        Interestingly, Diane Green just left Google Cloud, under somewhat unclear circumstances. It's possible that she did her job, "mission accomplished", it's possible that she did not do it well enough to attract big enterprise clients, but the most satisfying reason (albeit least likely), is that the Google decided to focus back on the technology and less on enticing Enterprise clients with laminated corporate-speak marketing. So even though this is probably the right move for Rust, it would behoove them to keep a section of their site/blog/newslettter/slack channel/etc for the nerds to get together working on what they love.
geodel 8y ago
You are right. Previously it was hackers, now it seems for growth hackers.

ajkjk 8y ago

I strongly agree. The list of features on the old list is very meaningful to a C programmer who will recognize all of those things as things would love to use every day. Its underlying message is "we're technical nerds and we made a thing that you'll like". The new version is corporate-speak that won't appeal to.. anyone? Its underlying message is "we're trying to get you to like us and we studied how to do this". But, like, what's the point of a programming language's website anyway? Most people who visit the site will probably be at least vaguely aware of it. You use it if recommendations online, code samples, etc are compelling, and if the early adoption story (examples and motivations) are compelling. All I ever want is a list of examples up front and center. The more words I have to get through that aren't literal actual examples that show both what the language looks like and what differentiates it... the more exhausting the whole experience.

rhn_mk1 8y ago
I totally agree. As a coder, whenever I visit a website of a project I'm interested in, I'm looking for key technical features to convince me it's the right tool for the job, or that it offers an unique property tht I never even thought about. That's usually conveyed in a list of bullet points, and a couple of examples. I can rarely find it though. I wasn't quite able to grasp why, and I kind of accepted this as how it is. But after seeing the two revisions side by side, I finally get it! The important, unique information found in the old version. The majority of project web sites are closer to the new version, which hides the complexity behind colorful "screens" and headlines which are short, friendly, distracting, and very, very bland, delivering the same "simplicity, performance, productivity" message regardless of the project. Can you guess what Docker does (or does especially well) just based on the website? [0] I've learned to cut the crap and go straight to the "about" page to understand the distinct advantages in a more condensed form, but that seems to be missing from the redesign. [0] https://www.docker.com/ https://www.docker.com/
- throwawaylolx 8y ago
  >As a coder Obviously the website is no longer targeted at coders: the Rust Team seems to target managers to push adoption. To me, it looks like a corporation that has to report user growth every quarter, so they start employing harmful UX to desperately try to push the numbers up.
- peterkelly 8y ago
  I often find myself going to the Wikipedia page of a project to find out what it really is because the project's own website fails to do so.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- anoncake 8y ago
  Whatever Docker is, it's Windows-only. Apparently.
ttsda 8y ago
The point of the old website was convincing developers to use Rust. It seems the point of the new one is convincing the higher ups to let their developers use Rust.
- speedplane 8y ago
  I have been using Google Cloud for many years now. I used it because I thought it was technically superior than AWS and several others. However, for years, many mocked it as a second-tier cloud provider that wasn't "serious". Then Google brought on Diane Green. As a technical nerd, I wasn't too pleased. Their nerdy How-To articles morphed into Enterprise Success Stories. It was irritating, but it also raised Google-Cloud to a "serious" cloud provider. Even though Rust's marketing pivot will likely irritate many, it's likely better for it long term.
  - ttsda 8y ago
    Agreed. As much as I liked the old site I think the rust team made the right call on this one. Perhaps the old page could be moved somewhere close to the language docs instead of being removed, but I'm confident whoever is in charge has given this much more thought than I could ever give (as well as most of the commenters here).
    - speedplane 8y ago
      Interestingly, Diane Green just left Google Cloud, under somewhat unclear circumstances. It's possible that she did her job, "mission accomplished", it's possible that she did not do it well enough to attract big enterprise clients, but the most satisfying reason (albeit least likely), is that the Google decided to focus back on the technology and less on enticing Enterprise clients with laminated corporate-speak marketing. So even though this is probably the right move for Rust, it would behoove them to keep a section of their site/blog/newslettter/slack channel/etc for the nerds to get together working on what they love.

geodel 8y ago

You are right. Previously it was hackers, now it seems for growth hackers.