7 ms·

Rust 2019: Tame Complexity through Community Involvement Tools

122 points by lwhsiao 8y ago

swsieber 8y ago
Well, I didn't expect to see this pop up here. (I'm the author)
- shijie 8y ago
  Great article. I’m excited for the future of Rust. A bit of really nit-picky grammatical feedback: you use it’s vs its wrong multiple times in the article. It was surprising given your solid command of technical prose displayed in the post. Try to bone up on the correct usage of the two. It makes a big difference. Thank you!!
  - swsieber 8y ago
    Doh, I know the difference but must have been lazy in my proof reading. Thanks for pointing those mistakes out to me. I'll go fix those now. Edit: Fixed! Thanks again.
- coldtea 8y ago
  Almost everything major (and lots of non-major stuff, like minor release announcements) regarding Rust ends up on HN, so it only made sense that this would too...
  - swsieber 8y ago
    I'd love to see click through vs up vote rates. I.e. do people up vote without clicking through? I'd love to see how it varies by topic...
SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
>The embededded working group could probably use a page listing all the platforms I haven’t looked into which micros are supported by Rust in actuality because I checked their main site and saw an old Nordic, a few old STMs, an old NXP, and some old MSPs, then left the page. If I was a hobbiest this might be ok and I might research it more. As a professional, I pretty much noped out of there assuming that it’s just nowhere near ready for me. I’d like to see it work! But until there is an IDE with debugging using code overlay and breakpoints... Rust is just not for me. I wonder what year they get there? Edit: apparently there is a gap between what hobbiests consider acceptable and what my company would need that the Rust fans can’t imagine - this somehow means my opinion isn’t valid. Let me know when Keil or IAR or anyone sells a supported and professional IDE with a Rust compiler.
- woah 8y ago
  I use the VS Code "CodeLLDB" extension
- th0br0 8y ago
  You do get all that today already. The various Cortex'es are supported rather well + gdb in combination with a JLink gives you the debugging interfaces you need.
  - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    You’re talking about command-line GDB?
    - XMPPwocky 8y ago
      Or anything that can talk to a gdbserver (most IDEs).
jhack 8y ago
Thought it'd be the syntax. Maybe next year.
- steveklabnik 8y ago
  There are no plans to significantly change the syntax.
  - zozbot123 8y ago
    Not as part of the official Rust project, of course. But it would be nice to see some exploration of what a "reskin" of Rust-like semantics with a different syntax could look like. Kind of like some languages, e.g. VB.NET or Nim are little more than "reskins" of others, in ways that arguably make them more intuitive than the original.
    - tln 8y ago
      What language is Nim reskinning? ReasonML is a reskin (of ocaml), Nim is not
    - swsieber 8y ago
      https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/pre-rfc-first-class-support-for-compile-to-rust-languages/7610/14 https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/pre-rfc-first-class-suppor... ^^ This link is a pre rfc for adding good support for those types of things.
- afandian 8y ago
  What don't you like about it?
  - grumpydba 8y ago
    Not the OP, but: lots of sigils. Dozens of macros. It's a huge language.
nixpulvis 8y ago
One of my 2019 goals is to try and be more involved with Rust in some way or shape. Hoping to go to meetups or the like. Rust as a language is really special to me, and I'd love to be able to give more back.
scaleout1 8y ago
Recently started introducing Rust in my team and here are my notes on some of the issues we have run into so far. We are primarily a Scala/JVM shop with a little bit of Python. - `Error Handling` is a bit of a dumpster fire right now. Rust has something called a `Result` enum which is similar to `Either[Error,T]` monad in Scala however every single Rust crate I have used so far its creating its own `Error` enum which makes it really hard to compose `Result`. Ideally I would like to chain `Results` as `e1.and_then(e2).and_then(e3)` but its not possible due to incompatible error enums. Ended up using `https://docs.rs/crate/custom_error/1.3.0` https://docs.rs/crate/custom_error/1.3.0` to align the types. - A lot of basic things are still influx and community wide standards have not been established. For example: I needed to externalize some environment specific settings in a Config but couldnt figure out where to put non-code assets in a cargo project and then how to reliable read them. In JVM world `src/main/resources` acts like a standard place for stuff like this but that patterns has not been established yet. - Distributing code inside the company is hard because there is no integration with Artifactory or similar tools. We are directly referring git sha in Cargo right now and waiting for better solutions. - Rust comes with a default unit test framework but it pretty bare bones. I havent seen examples of test fixture, setup/teardown support and loading test configs etc. - I really like Rust compiler because of really good error messages it produces but its really slow and you start to notice it as you add more code/external crates -IDE support is good but not great. I am using IntelliJ with Rust plugin as we use IntelliJ for Scala/JVM and it is nowhere as good as even Scala plugin which is pretty mediocre in itself. Overall I am pretty happy with the language (except for Error issue) and most of my gripes are around the ecosystem and tooling around the language. Hopefully these will be resolved as language gains more momentum
- joelg236 8y ago
  For non-code assets, do you know about `include_bytes`?
  - tangent128 8y ago
    I found rust-embed recently[0], which lets you embed an entire directory in release mode while deferring to the file system in debug mode. [0]: https://github.com/pyros2097/rust-embed https://github.com/pyros2097/rust-embed
wwright 8y ago
I truly love the Rust project. There is so much genuine compassion, diligence, and attention in the community, and it shows everywhere.
- cjohansson 8y ago
  That has been my experience as well
qznc 8y ago
I continue to admire the Rust PR. This "everybody blog what Rust should do in 2019" generates a lot of publicity from my point of view. Other language communities, take note.
Lerc 8y ago
What I would like to see is something where people could submit a small working program in one language and a Rust expert would make a program that does the same thing in idiomatic Rust. This doesn't need to be anything too complex. A wiki would be fine, the work would be in having volunteers to make the demos. If you don't know the idioms you end up doing a sort of transliteration of the source language where the concepts may work against the nature of Rust. A developer can spend a long time barking up the wrong tree with few indicators as to which is the right tree. As an example of what I mean. Here is a program that I wrote in JavaScript specifically because I could not find a way to write it in Rust that felt like I was doing it the right way. https://codepen.io/Lerc/pen/yQxmob?editors=0010 https://codepen.io/Lerc/pen/yQxmob?editors=0010 I could come up with Rust versions that were basically emulating pointers with array indexes(and a mess when something is deleted), or map versions that incurred lots of run-time lookup. The crux of the problem, I think is either how to do a mutable graph of mutable nodes, or how to do map on a immutable graph of immutable nodes to a new immutable graph of immutable nodes in the next state along. I'm sure others have this issue of "I know how to do it in X, doing it that way in Rust is a mess, what's the right way?"
- steveklabnik 8y ago
  Array indices with generational indices are popular, by the way. I think this idea is pretty good!
- epage 8y ago
  I agree about the need for an Idioms Cookbook or something to show different practices. We have one for how libraries can help you solve problems but not code patterns..
- em-bee 8y ago
  take a look at http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:Rust http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:Rust more than 400 code examples have a solution in Rust.
  - steveklabnik 8y ago
    There’s no real guarantee of quality or idiom there, though.

122 points by lwhsiao 8y ago

swsieber 8y ago

Well, I didn't expect to see this pop up here. (I'm the author)

shijie 8y ago
Great article. I’m excited for the future of Rust. A bit of really nit-picky grammatical feedback: you use it’s vs its wrong multiple times in the article. It was surprising given your solid command of technical prose displayed in the post. Try to bone up on the correct usage of the two. It makes a big difference. Thank you!!
- swsieber 8y ago
  Doh, I know the difference but must have been lazy in my proof reading. Thanks for pointing those mistakes out to me. I'll go fix those now. Edit: Fixed! Thanks again.
coldtea 8y ago
Almost everything major (and lots of non-major stuff, like minor release announcements) regarding Rust ends up on HN, so it only made sense that this would too...
- swsieber 8y ago
  I'd love to see click through vs up vote rates. I.e. do people up vote without clicking through? I'd love to see how it varies by topic...

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago

>The embededded working group could probably use a page listing all the platforms I haven’t looked into which micros are supported by Rust in actuality because I checked their main site and saw an old Nordic, a few old STMs, an old NXP, and some old MSPs, then left the page. If I was a hobbiest this might be ok and I might research it more. As a professional, I pretty much noped out of there assuming that it’s just nowhere near ready for me. I’d like to see it work! But until there is an IDE with debugging using code overlay and breakpoints... Rust is just not for me. I wonder what year they get there? Edit: apparently there is a gap between what hobbiests consider acceptable and what my company would need that the Rust fans can’t imagine - this somehow means my opinion isn’t valid. Let me know when Keil or IAR or anyone sells a supported and professional IDE with a Rust compiler.

woah 8y ago
I use the VS Code "CodeLLDB" extension
th0br0 8y ago
You do get all that today already. The various Cortex'es are supported rather well + gdb in combination with a JLink gives you the debugging interfaces you need.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  You’re talking about command-line GDB?
  - XMPPwocky 8y ago
    Or anything that can talk to a gdbserver (most IDEs).

jhack 8y ago

Thought it'd be the syntax. Maybe next year.

steveklabnik 8y ago
There are no plans to significantly change the syntax.
- zozbot123 8y ago
  Not as part of the official Rust project, of course. But it would be nice to see some exploration of what a "reskin" of Rust-like semantics with a different syntax could look like. Kind of like some languages, e.g. VB.NET or Nim are little more than "reskins" of others, in ways that arguably make them more intuitive than the original.
  - tln 8y ago
    What language is Nim reskinning? ReasonML is a reskin (of ocaml), Nim is not
  - swsieber 8y ago
    https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/pre-rfc-first-class-support-for-compile-to-rust-languages/7610/14 https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/pre-rfc-first-class-suppor... ^^ This link is a pre rfc for adding good support for those types of things.
afandian 8y ago
What don't you like about it?
- grumpydba 8y ago
  Not the OP, but: lots of sigils. Dozens of macros. It's a huge language.

nixpulvis 8y ago

One of my 2019 goals is to try and be more involved with Rust in some way or shape. Hoping to go to meetups or the like. Rust as a language is really special to me, and I'd love to be able to give more back.

scaleout1 8y ago

Recently started introducing Rust in my team and here are my notes on some of the issues we have run into so far. We are primarily a Scala/JVM shop with a little bit of Python. - `Error Handling` is a bit of a dumpster fire right now. Rust has something called a `Result` enum which is similar to `Either[Error,T]` monad in Scala however every single Rust crate I have used so far its creating its own `Error` enum which makes it really hard to compose `Result`. Ideally I would like to chain `Results` as `e1.and_then(e2).and_then(e3)` but its not possible due to incompatible error enums. Ended up using `https://docs.rs/crate/custom_error/1.3.0` https://docs.rs/crate/custom_error/1.3.0` to align the types. - A lot of basic things are still influx and community wide standards have not been established. For example: I needed to externalize some environment specific settings in a Config but couldnt figure out where to put non-code assets in a cargo project and then how to reliable read them. In JVM world `src/main/resources` acts like a standard place for stuff like this but that patterns has not been established yet. - Distributing code inside the company is hard because there is no integration with Artifactory or similar tools. We are directly referring git sha in Cargo right now and waiting for better solutions. - Rust comes with a default unit test framework but it pretty bare bones. I havent seen examples of test fixture, setup/teardown support and loading test configs etc. - I really like Rust compiler because of really good error messages it produces but its really slow and you start to notice it as you add more code/external crates -IDE support is good but not great. I am using IntelliJ with Rust plugin as we use IntelliJ for Scala/JVM and it is nowhere as good as even Scala plugin which is pretty mediocre in itself. Overall I am pretty happy with the language (except for Error issue) and most of my gripes are around the ecosystem and tooling around the language. Hopefully these will be resolved as language gains more momentum

joelg236 8y ago
For non-code assets, do you know about `include_bytes`?
- tangent128 8y ago
  I found rust-embed recently[0], which lets you embed an entire directory in release mode while deferring to the file system in debug mode. [0]: https://github.com/pyros2097/rust-embed https://github.com/pyros2097/rust-embed

wwright 8y ago

I truly love the Rust project. There is so much genuine compassion, diligence, and attention in the community, and it shows everywhere.

cjohansson 8y ago
That has been my experience as well

qznc 8y ago

I continue to admire the Rust PR. This "everybody blog what Rust should do in 2019" generates a lot of publicity from my point of view. Other language communities, take note.

Lerc 8y ago

What I would like to see is something where people could submit a small working program in one language and a Rust expert would make a program that does the same thing in idiomatic Rust. This doesn't need to be anything too complex. A wiki would be fine, the work would be in having volunteers to make the demos. If you don't know the idioms you end up doing a sort of transliteration of the source language where the concepts may work against the nature of Rust. A developer can spend a long time barking up the wrong tree with few indicators as to which is the right tree. As an example of what I mean. Here is a program that I wrote in JavaScript specifically because I could not find a way to write it in Rust that felt like I was doing it the right way. https://codepen.io/Lerc/pen/yQxmob?editors=0010 https://codepen.io/Lerc/pen/yQxmob?editors=0010 I could come up with Rust versions that were basically emulating pointers with array indexes(and a mess when something is deleted), or map versions that incurred lots of run-time lookup. The crux of the problem, I think is either how to do a mutable graph of mutable nodes, or how to do map on a immutable graph of immutable nodes to a new immutable graph of immutable nodes in the next state along. I'm sure others have this issue of "I know how to do it in X, doing it that way in Rust is a mess, what's the right way?"

steveklabnik 8y ago
Array indices with generational indices are popular, by the way. I think this idea is pretty good!
epage 8y ago
I agree about the need for an Idioms Cookbook or something to show different practices. We have one for how libraries can help you solve problems but not code patterns..
em-bee 8y ago
take a look at http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:Rust http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:Rust more than 400 code examples have a solution in Rust.
- steveklabnik 8y ago
  There’s no real guarantee of quality or idiom there, though.