4 ms·

Any time the first line of a project description reads "This is NewTool, written in <language>" it's an immediate red flag that makes it hard for me to continue

Any time the first line of a project description reads "This is NewTool, written in <language>" it's an immediate red flag that makes it hard for me to continue reading. Obviously it doesn't necessarily mean the project has no merits, but language choice is one of the less relevant details and it signals that the author wanted to make a toy in a language new to them. Good for them, but most of the time the rest of the world doesn't care. If the project has merits, and this one might, it should talk about them in the intro.

crispinb 7y ago
> most of the time the rest of the world doesn't care Much of the time, HN readers however will. There's the odd software developer hanging about here, some of whom are interested in programming languages, or so I believe.
perspective1 7y ago
Rust isn't new to Turner (the author), he was one the Rust Language team at Mozilla.
SparkyMcUnicorn 7y ago
Agree mostly, but there are certain languages that I give it a pass for given the context. A good shell written in Rust is intriguing. I don't think I want the fad to go away, because it can even help me know what to steer clear of. e.g. Introducing a new shell written in JS!).
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
zeveb 7y ago
Completely agreed. Also, this line in the article was another red flag: > Nu would not have been possible without Rust. That's nonsense! Nu would be possible in any Turing-complete language. Other languages support async/await, asynchronous streams & serialisation/deserialisation. Go leaps to mind, but — again — this sort of thing is possible in pretty much any programming language. Now, maybe it was easier or quicker in Rust than it would have been in another language. But it certainly would have been possible. Combine those two red flags together, and I get the sense that it's just an ethusiasts' project. Nothing wrong with that, but I don't think it's something I'll be converting my company's shell scripts right away …

crispinb 7y ago

> most of the time the rest of the world doesn't care Much of the time, HN readers however will. There's the odd software developer hanging about here, some of whom are interested in programming languages, or so I believe.

perspective1 7y ago

Rust isn't new to Turner (the author), he was one the Rust Language team at Mozilla.

SparkyMcUnicorn 7y ago

Agree mostly, but there are certain languages that I give it a pass for given the context. A good shell written in Rust is intriguing. I don't think I want the fad to go away, because it can even help me know what to steer clear of. e.g. Introducing a new shell written in JS!).

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

zeveb 7y ago

Completely agreed. Also, this line in the article was another red flag: > Nu would not have been possible without Rust. That's nonsense! Nu would be possible in any Turing-complete language. Other languages support async/await, asynchronous streams & serialisation/deserialisation. Go leaps to mind, but — again — this sort of thing is possible in pretty much any programming language. Now, maybe it was easier or quicker in Rust than it would have been in another language. But it certainly would have been possible. Combine those two red flags together, and I get the sense that it's just an ethusiasts' project. Nothing wrong with that, but I don't think it's something I'll be converting my company's shell scripts right away …