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"X written in Rust" is becoming a tiring clickbait pattern on tech boards. Why not simply announcing "X" in the title?

by mmoez 7y ago

giancarlostoro 7y ago
I like knowing what language something is coded in. It makes me more likely to look into the project. If it's written in something I'm not interested in I may click through, but not be as thorough, and some languages I save the link for later because I have no interest in them professionally or on my time off. I like looking at all projects eventually because some people come up with amazing pieces of software in all types of languages, but others might not care to look at a Ruby, PHP, NodeJS, Python, C, C++, Rust etc project.
- mmoez 7y ago
  So per your rationale, why not listing in the title other pertinent information about the project? I am saying that because the programming language is not what defines a project. It could be a pile of junk even if it written in the greatest language ever made.
  - rapsey 7y ago
    It can be a pile of junk because of the language it is written in.
    - mmoez 7y ago
      > It can be a pile of junk because of the language it is written in. So many wonderful things were written in assembly or PHP (assuming you rate PHP and assembly on the other end of the spectrum of awesomeness.)
      - rapsey 7y ago
        The ratio of garbage to awesome is relevant not individual examples
  - giancarlostoro 7y ago
    Sometimes people do, they say "Django" instead of "in Python using Django" which I think is fine. People who know Python will take the hint.
codetrotter 7y ago
As someone writing software in Rust myself I am always interested in knowing about projects using Rust for multiple reasons. 1) In the case of libraries (crates), it might be something I can make use of in the future. 2) I can look at how they solved the problem they are solving and compare that with how I'd do it and maybe learn something new that can be useful to me in my future projects. 3) I want Rust to thrive and I want people to be aware of projects using Rust because the more people that are aware of Rust the bigger is the probability that I can work for more companies in the future writing software for them in Rust.
- mmoez 7y ago
  Fast rewind/forward n years, and you could replace "Rust" in your post with the name of the language /du jour/. My original comment was because as an old guy who saw hype around so many languages come and go, I am getting tired of those projects who try to sell themselves only because they are written in Rust.
  - snagglegaggle 7y ago
    Rust is probably here to stay seeing as it was picked up by Firefox. I still think it could have been done better, but perfect is the enemy of good enough.
    - mmoez 7y ago
      So was said about Java 20 years ago... Yet no one dares today post a "X in Java" anymore on HN.
      - smolder 7y ago
        And was probably said about Fortran and C. Our tools are getting better. I can only hope Rust becomes so widely used that I can recommend big companies use it since they'll have a trillion developer hiring pool.
    - zozbot234 7y ago
Hendrikto 7y ago
I see this just as often for Python, C, JavaScript, etc. The patters is more like "X written in Y", which is totally fine imo.
opencl 7y ago
I think it's relevant for open source projects because people might want to contribute to them or just read through the code to see how things work. And of course people will be more interested in doing those things with languages they have experience using. The same developer also happens to have written a similar server in Python a while back: https://github.com/mosuka/cockatrice https://github.com/mosuka/cockatrice
ccccc0 7y ago
Rust is young enough that you can read this as an ad for the language, not the project. "Rust is a language in which people write full-text search and indexing"
gpm 7y ago
What codetrotter and ccccc0 said, also Rust as a language and a community has a strong focus on correctness, which makes me more interested in actually using the project. In general I think the title of a project on a news aggregator should basically be a 80 character sales pitch, " in rust" is 8 characters that signal a lot more than most 8 characters could (to me).
jedisct1 7y ago
This.
hobofan 7y ago
Tell the mods that. I've seen mupltiple titles where they edited the original title to include "in X".
reacharavindh 7y ago
It’s not useless. I for one associate language with their run time properties.. Written in Python - easy to understand, but lacks performance. Probably cant use more than 1 CPU core. Needs a lot of memory. Written in Go - fast enough for most cases, all CPU cores, but possibly high mem usage becUse of GC. I need to plan for it. Written in Rust - possibly new and maturing, uses memory effectively, likely to use all cores. Easy to deploy (single binary) Written in JS - probably not for me - personal taste and hate of npm ecosystem. Written in C - probably the best performing, but less robust, no memory safety. So, “written in” helps in judging whether to care for that project or not to some extent.
- h91wka 7y ago
  Sorry, but by and large that's "red goes faster" type of reasoning.
  - jaxwerk 7y ago
    Red is a property of a car totally unrelated to its performance characteristics. The language software is implemented in absolutely has an impact on the performance and behavior of the software. This is more like "Carbon is faster than aluminum." Yeah, it's a generalization, but it's a useful one.
  - cgag 7y ago
    I don't know what you people get out of pretending you can't derive much from being told what language something is written in.
- michaelcampbell 7y ago
  At least it's not Rust-this or that-4-Rust. The bundling of the language in the title of the app is a fad I hope I see the end of. Yes, Python, we get that you wrote WhateverPy in Python.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
bishala 7y ago
was about to comment the same before seeing your comment.
acdha 7y ago
Rust is an interesting language both for its technical characteristics, which is a direct appeal as other commenters have noted, but it can also be worth noting because Rust interoperates almost as well as C. If I announce a cool Python module, someone who primarily uses Ruby is probably going to ignore it because the level of effort to use it would be more than it's worth. If I announce a cool Rust module, they might think “you know, it's pretty easy to build a wrapper…”.
staticassertion 7y ago
"In Rust" signals something very important to me, especially with the context of "full text search". ES is the current free text search engine out there, and it's famously painful to manage. Resource consumption and GC pain can be really significant. I see 'rust' and I know immediately that at least some pains I've experienced will be eliminated.

"X written in Rust" is becoming a tiring clickbait pattern on tech boards. Why not simply announcing "X" in the title?

by mmoez 7y ago

"X written in Rust" is becoming a tiring clickbait pattern on tech boards. Why not simply announcing "X" in the title?

I like knowing what language something is coded in. It makes me more likely to look into the project. If it's written in something I'm not interested in I may click through, but not be as thorough, and some languages I save the link for later because I have no interest in them professionally or on my time off. I like looking at all projects eventually because some people come up with amazing pieces of software in all types of languages, but others might not care to look at a Ruby, PHP, NodeJS, Python, C, C++, Rust etc project.

mmoez 7y ago
So per your rationale, why not listing in the title other pertinent information about the project? I am saying that because the programming language is not what defines a project. It could be a pile of junk even if it written in the greatest language ever made.
- rapsey 7y ago
  It can be a pile of junk because of the language it is written in.
  - mmoez 7y ago
    > It can be a pile of junk because of the language it is written in. So many wonderful things were written in assembly or PHP (assuming you rate PHP and assembly on the other end of the spectrum of awesomeness.)
    - rapsey 7y ago
      The ratio of garbage to awesome is relevant not individual examples
- giancarlostoro 7y ago
  Sometimes people do, they say "Django" instead of "in Python using Django" which I think is fine. People who know Python will take the hint.

codetrotter 7y ago

As someone writing software in Rust myself I am always interested in knowing about projects using Rust for multiple reasons. 1) In the case of libraries (crates), it might be something I can make use of in the future. 2) I can look at how they solved the problem they are solving and compare that with how I'd do it and maybe learn something new that can be useful to me in my future projects. 3) I want Rust to thrive and I want people to be aware of projects using Rust because the more people that are aware of Rust the bigger is the probability that I can work for more companies in the future writing software for them in Rust.

mmoez 7y ago
Fast rewind/forward n years, and you could replace "Rust" in your post with the name of the language /du jour/. My original comment was because as an old guy who saw hype around so many languages come and go, I am getting tired of those projects who try to sell themselves only because they are written in Rust.
- snagglegaggle 7y ago
  Rust is probably here to stay seeing as it was picked up by Firefox. I still think it could have been done better, but perfect is the enemy of good enough.
  - mmoez 7y ago
    So was said about Java 20 years ago... Yet no one dares today post a "X in Java" anymore on HN.
    - smolder 7y ago
      And was probably said about Fortran and C. Our tools are getting better. I can only hope Rust becomes so widely used that I can recommend big companies use it since they'll have a trillion developer hiring pool.
  - zozbot234 7y ago

Hendrikto 7y ago

I see this just as often for Python, C, JavaScript, etc. The patters is more like "X written in Y", which is totally fine imo.

opencl 7y ago

I think it's relevant for open source projects because people might want to contribute to them or just read through the code to see how things work. And of course people will be more interested in doing those things with languages they have experience using. The same developer also happens to have written a similar server in Python a while back: https://github.com/mosuka/cockatrice https://github.com/mosuka/cockatrice

ccccc0 7y ago

Rust is young enough that you can read this as an ad for the language, not the project. "Rust is a language in which people write full-text search and indexing"

gpm 7y ago

What codetrotter and ccccc0 said, also Rust as a language and a community has a strong focus on correctness, which makes me more interested in actually using the project. In general I think the title of a project on a news aggregator should basically be a 80 character sales pitch, " in rust" is 8 characters that signal a lot more than most 8 characters could (to me).

jedisct1 7y ago

This.

hobofan 7y ago

Tell the mods that. I've seen mupltiple titles where they edited the original title to include "in X".

reacharavindh 7y ago

It’s not useless. I for one associate language with their run time properties.. Written in Python - easy to understand, but lacks performance. Probably cant use more than 1 CPU core. Needs a lot of memory. Written in Go - fast enough for most cases, all CPU cores, but possibly high mem usage becUse of GC. I need to plan for it. Written in Rust - possibly new and maturing, uses memory effectively, likely to use all cores. Easy to deploy (single binary) Written in JS - probably not for me - personal taste and hate of npm ecosystem. Written in C - probably the best performing, but less robust, no memory safety. So, “written in” helps in judging whether to care for that project or not to some extent.

h91wka 7y ago
Sorry, but by and large that's "red goes faster" type of reasoning.
- jaxwerk 7y ago
  Red is a property of a car totally unrelated to its performance characteristics. The language software is implemented in absolutely has an impact on the performance and behavior of the software. This is more like "Carbon is faster than aluminum." Yeah, it's a generalization, but it's a useful one.
- cgag 7y ago
  I don't know what you people get out of pretending you can't derive much from being told what language something is written in.
michaelcampbell 7y ago
At least it's not Rust-this or that-4-Rust. The bundling of the language in the title of the app is a fad I hope I see the end of. Yes, Python, we get that you wrote WhateverPy in Python.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

bishala 7y ago

was about to comment the same before seeing your comment.

acdha 7y ago

Rust is an interesting language both for its technical characteristics, which is a direct appeal as other commenters have noted, but it can also be worth noting because Rust interoperates almost as well as C. If I announce a cool Python module, someone who primarily uses Ruby is probably going to ignore it because the level of effort to use it would be more than it's worth. If I announce a cool Rust module, they might think “you know, it's pretty easy to build a wrapper…”.

staticassertion 7y ago

"In Rust" signals something very important to me, especially with the context of "full text search". ES is the current free text search engine out there, and it's famously painful to manage. Resource consumption and GC pain can be really significant. I see 'rust' and I know immediately that at least some pains I've experienced will be eliminated.