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Surprised to see backend web apps as top use of rust by a large margin. I guess many take the common opportunity(web dev) to learn the language?

jasondclinton 7y ago
I think that its a reflection of where much of the market's jobs are: "backend web app" might as just well be replaced with "thing moving data around with RPCs" which is what so much of the value software provides in the economy is tied up, these days. Also, for startups who live-or-die by their cloud hosting costs, reducing CPU utilization by 2x and MEM utilization by 5x versus GC'd languages, the value proposition is real.
- Thaxll 7y ago
  That's not how it works, since most startup run python / ruby / nodes code, the cost of your app is definitely not a big concern, especially since you can have performat code in any language, you don't need rust speed in 99.9% of the cases.
  - steveklabnik 7y ago
    It’s not always about performance. Memory usage matters too. And reliability. We’ve heard all of these things from folks switching.
  - nicoburns 7y ago
    Sometimes performance matters. At my previous company we settled on a Rust solution for one component (ingesting analytics data) after cycling through python and node prototypes that were just too slow (we had 100+ GB of data to process, and the node.js app was taking 15 minutes to process one 500mb file). And once the data processing code was in Rust, it made sense to have the endpoint that collected the data in Rust too. It would probably have been possible to optimise the node/python versions. But it was easier to write it in Rust that is designed for these high-performance scenarios. An unexpected bonus was just how reliable our Rust code turned out to be. I'd definitely consider Rust for non-performance critical code on that basis.
  - Dowwie 7y ago
    Performance is the tip of the value proposition iceberg for Rust.
wvenable 7y ago
I think it's just that majority of new applications are web applications.
- phire 7y ago
  Web apps or mobile apps. Rust doesn't do so well in the mobile app space.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    On the contrary, a number of people are shipping Rust libraries in their apps today.
    - FridgeSeal 7y ago
      For example: The tokenisers in the HuggingFace libraries are now written in Rust.
  - wvenable 7y ago
    I still think web applications massively out-scale mobile apps. The majority of software written is not general purpose consumer level "shink wrap" apps and never was. Still, a very large portion of mobile apps are connecting to some back end service. I think I have exactly one app that stores it's data locally without a server connection (not counting games).
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      Even there Rust needs to compete with the productivity, libraries, IDE support and compile times from JavaScript, TypeScript, Java, .NET and Go. Additionally really don't see a need for having to deal with the borrow checker in distributed computing applications, instead of tracing GC + value types. Rust's ideal place is like where Oracle, Apple, Google and Microsoft are placing C++, OS low level libraries, audio codecs, graphics drivers.
  - EugeneOZ 7y ago
    Mobile apps might use APIs too - it means Rust on the server-side.
neutronicus 7y ago
The cynical answer is because what else can you write when your GUI story and your graphics story are meh (but then again who cares when you can just piggyback off Electron)

jasondclinton 7y ago

I think that its a reflection of where much of the market's jobs are: "backend web app" might as just well be replaced with "thing moving data around with RPCs" which is what so much of the value software provides in the economy is tied up, these days. Also, for startups who live-or-die by their cloud hosting costs, reducing CPU utilization by 2x and MEM utilization by 5x versus GC'd languages, the value proposition is real.

Thaxll 7y ago
That's not how it works, since most startup run python / ruby / nodes code, the cost of your app is definitely not a big concern, especially since you can have performat code in any language, you don't need rust speed in 99.9% of the cases.
- steveklabnik 7y ago
  It’s not always about performance. Memory usage matters too. And reliability. We’ve heard all of these things from folks switching.
- nicoburns 7y ago
  Sometimes performance matters. At my previous company we settled on a Rust solution for one component (ingesting analytics data) after cycling through python and node prototypes that were just too slow (we had 100+ GB of data to process, and the node.js app was taking 15 minutes to process one 500mb file). And once the data processing code was in Rust, it made sense to have the endpoint that collected the data in Rust too. It would probably have been possible to optimise the node/python versions. But it was easier to write it in Rust that is designed for these high-performance scenarios. An unexpected bonus was just how reliable our Rust code turned out to be. I'd definitely consider Rust for non-performance critical code on that basis.
- Dowwie 7y ago
  Performance is the tip of the value proposition iceberg for Rust.

wvenable 7y ago

I think it's just that majority of new applications are web applications.

phire 7y ago
Web apps or mobile apps. Rust doesn't do so well in the mobile app space.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  On the contrary, a number of people are shipping Rust libraries in their apps today.
  - FridgeSeal 7y ago
    For example: The tokenisers in the HuggingFace libraries are now written in Rust.
- wvenable 7y ago
  I still think web applications massively out-scale mobile apps. The majority of software written is not general purpose consumer level "shink wrap" apps and never was. Still, a very large portion of mobile apps are connecting to some back end service. I think I have exactly one app that stores it's data locally without a server connection (not counting games).
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Even there Rust needs to compete with the productivity, libraries, IDE support and compile times from JavaScript, TypeScript, Java, .NET and Go. Additionally really don't see a need for having to deal with the borrow checker in distributed computing applications, instead of tracing GC + value types. Rust's ideal place is like where Oracle, Apple, Google and Microsoft are placing C++, OS low level libraries, audio codecs, graphics drivers.
- EugeneOZ 7y ago
  Mobile apps might use APIs too - it means Rust on the server-side.

neutronicus 7y ago

The cynical answer is because what else can you write when your GUI story and your graphics story are meh (but then again who cares when you can just piggyback off Electron)