4 ms·

Can someone explain why rust is so beloved? Also I work in R primarily, I find it funny that love and dread are both near 50%.

mmmeff 8y ago
I just started working through a textbook to learn Rust, coming from a heavy Typescript/Node background. It's too soon to say whether or not I'm in love but I already really like the approach to lower level programming with modern development perks like linting (RLS), package management (Cargo), simple build scripts (Cargo again). Comparing it to NPM+Node, there's a lot to like. I'm really looking forward to learning more.
- Takizawa 8y ago
  Rust has an elegant concept in its ownership paradigm. As the Rust book mentions: Ownership is Rust’s most unique feature, and it enables Rust to make memory safety guarantees without needing a garbage collector. In other words, you have the power/speed of a low level language without certain of the dangers, such as "double free" errors. (That said, I'm only now proceeding through the official book. In other words, if I got this wrong, someone correct me.)
bad_good_guy 8y ago
Disclaimer: This is personal observation. Fetishization of low-level languages by primarily Javascript developers, plus it has the same socially liberal online community that Javascript has, due to Mozilla. I hope this comment doesn't portray any bias.
- fj39dkf 8y ago
  Can you elaborate on what you mean by "socially liberal"? Which language communities are on the other side of the spectrum?
alkonaut 8y ago
For me: because the languages that it is supposed to replace ie the C-style curly brace Lang’s in the systems/low-level/backend niches are all pretty bad. And a lot of us have used them for a decade or three so we are very aware of what’s bad. If you come from Java/C# and discover the speed of C without the pain of C, or if you come from C/C++ and notice life with decent compiler messages, a nice package manager, sane modules etc. - that’s a fantastic feeling.
PascLeRasc 8y ago
Others have answered about the performance, and it is incredibly efficient. But for me it's the community - /r/rust and discussions on here about Rust have always been pretty friendly and understanding, which hasn't been my experience with other programming language fans (looking at you, C++).
anderspitman 8y ago
For me, it's hard to quantify. Writing Rust feels different from any programming I've ever done in the past 12 years. It reminds me of the first time I dove into functional programming. You pay so much of the development cost up front in both time and frustration. But once it works, the guarantees you're left with provide a level of security and confidence that's unmatched in my experience. Somewhat similar to having a high quality unit test suite and strictly following TDD Kent Beck's way. The process is weird, but I love it.
aphistic 8y ago
I made this as a presentation to the people I worked with a couple years ago. I haven't updated it since then but I think it's still relevant today if you want some perspective on why I personally like it: https://aphistic.github.io/why-i-like-rust/ https://aphistic.github.io/why-i-like-rust/
golergka 8y ago
For me, it's because it combines the perfomance of a low-level langauge with convenience of high-level statically typed functionally-oriented language.

mmmeff 8y ago

I just started working through a textbook to learn Rust, coming from a heavy Typescript/Node background. It's too soon to say whether or not I'm in love but I already really like the approach to lower level programming with modern development perks like linting (RLS), package management (Cargo), simple build scripts (Cargo again). Comparing it to NPM+Node, there's a lot to like. I'm really looking forward to learning more.

Takizawa 8y ago
Rust has an elegant concept in its ownership paradigm. As the Rust book mentions: Ownership is Rust’s most unique feature, and it enables Rust to make memory safety guarantees without needing a garbage collector. In other words, you have the power/speed of a low level language without certain of the dangers, such as "double free" errors. (That said, I'm only now proceeding through the official book. In other words, if I got this wrong, someone correct me.)

bad_good_guy 8y ago

Disclaimer: This is personal observation. Fetishization of low-level languages by primarily Javascript developers, plus it has the same socially liberal online community that Javascript has, due to Mozilla. I hope this comment doesn't portray any bias.

fj39dkf 8y ago
Can you elaborate on what you mean by "socially liberal"? Which language communities are on the other side of the spectrum?

alkonaut 8y ago

For me: because the languages that it is supposed to replace ie the C-style curly brace Lang’s in the systems/low-level/backend niches are all pretty bad. And a lot of us have used them for a decade or three so we are very aware of what’s bad. If you come from Java/C# and discover the speed of C without the pain of C, or if you come from C/C++ and notice life with decent compiler messages, a nice package manager, sane modules etc. - that’s a fantastic feeling.

PascLeRasc 8y ago

Others have answered about the performance, and it is incredibly efficient. But for me it's the community - /r/rust and discussions on here about Rust have always been pretty friendly and understanding, which hasn't been my experience with other programming language fans (looking at you, C++).

anderspitman 8y ago

For me, it's hard to quantify. Writing Rust feels different from any programming I've ever done in the past 12 years. It reminds me of the first time I dove into functional programming. You pay so much of the development cost up front in both time and frustration. But once it works, the guarantees you're left with provide a level of security and confidence that's unmatched in my experience. Somewhat similar to having a high quality unit test suite and strictly following TDD Kent Beck's way. The process is weird, but I love it.

aphistic 8y ago

I made this as a presentation to the people I worked with a couple years ago. I haven't updated it since then but I think it's still relevant today if you want some perspective on why I personally like it: https://aphistic.github.io/why-i-like-rust/ https://aphistic.github.io/why-i-like-rust/

golergka 8y ago

For me, it's because it combines the perfomance of a low-level langauge with convenience of high-level statically typed functionally-oriented language.