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If Rust's competitor is C++, you don't need to attract Rails developers, you need to attract C++ developers. If anything, i would say that over the last year o

by twic 7y ago

If Rust's competitor is C++, you don't need to attract Rails developers, you need to attract C++ developers. If anything, i would say that over the last year or so, too much effort has been put into making Rust a competitor for web development, what with async, and lots of attention paid to web frameworks. Meanwhile, C++ people i know mostly look at it and say "meh, no const generics, no placement new".

steveklabnik 7y ago
First of all, we tend to work on what users are asking for. This survey shows a lot of interest for web and rust. Second, we’ve been working a ton on const generics. It takes a long, long time. But it’s been a constant effort. We’ll get there. (Placement new has had less attention.)
- twic 7y ago
  > First of all, we tend to work on what users are asking for. This survey shows a lot of interest for web and rust. If (if!) Rust's mission was to replace C++, that would be a mistake. That's pretty obvious, right? You decide to replace C++. You make a language which isn't a great C++ replacement. You attract users who aren't C++ programmers. They aren't interested in the things C++ programmers are interested in. You build features which don't appeal to C++ programmers. Lather, rinse, repeat. I think at this point, in practice, Rust's goal isn't to replace C++. It's to become a better Rust.
  - sgift 7y ago
    > They aren't interested in the things C++ programmers are interested in. This assumption only holds if people didn't want to do systems programming before. Many people who wanted to do it crashed into C++ and then said "yeah okay, not for me", which calls this into question.
  - steveklabnik 7y ago
    That’s mission was never to replace C or C++, it’s true. From the very first introduction of Rust to the world: “a complied, concurrent, safe systems language.” Then it was “memory safety without garbage collection”. Now it’s “A language empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software.” Sure there is domain and design overlap, but the goal was never explicitly attracting C or C++ programmers. At least not exclusively.
    - Sammi 7y ago
      There was a mission statement before any of those that went something along the lines of: "Be much better at building a browser with than c++ is" That is still Mozilla's main angle on Rust, but Rust has grown much beyond Mozilla, so this is just history now as you describe.
_bxg1 7y ago
One of the unusual things about Rust is how wide a segment of developers it's trying to please. Everyone from C to JavaScript. It's fascinating how well it's doing so far, but it leads to inevitable compromises at a certain point.
zelly 7y ago
C++ programmers will not switch to Rust. Most of them are older than the maximum age where you can learn new things, let alone be willing (or allowed in their company) to do so. Rust will be most popular with those who are 18 years old now and wanting to try native programming. When you compare the two, tabula rasa, it's just a no-brainer.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Koshkin 7y ago
  People used to say the same about C++ vs. Java. (But hey, C++ devs were young back then, and many of them did switch to Java; didn’t hurt C++ though - it was the best who stayed.)
- erik_seaberg 7y ago
  > maximum age where you can learn new things When is that? Knuth is 82.
- Sindisil 7y ago
  > older than the maximum age where you can learn new things WTF? Some day, when you've grown up a bit, you might understand just how stupid that post was.
  - dang 7y ago
    Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That just makes the thread even worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't post flamebait to HN. Generational flamebait is among the dumbest and most wretched sort we see here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
pjmlp 7y ago
There are other stuff like "meh, ....". GUI tooling like Qt or XAML, even OWL, MFC, wxWidgets, VCL, if I go pick 90's examples. async/await runtime as part of std. C++20 async/await isn't relying to competing external libraries. Mixed language IDE based development experience, including debugging across languages on the same session, e.g. Java/C++, .NET/C++, Objective-C, Swift/C++.
- pornel 7y ago
  > C++20 async/await isn't relying to competing external libraries. Standard library is a liability. It's only a matter of time before any non-trivial stuff will turn out to be worse than a 3rd party solution, and won't be able to catch up due to std's constraints (C++ regex being extreme example). Rust has already learned that lesson with channels. So instead of having to say "don't use std's, use the other faster nicer thing", Rust skips over the tech debt part, and recommends the other faster nicer thing immediately. And a clean separation of await from its runtime is actually pretty cool. I'm writing a GTK+ app right now, and I can await button clicks on its event loop.

by twic 7y ago

steveklabnik 7y ago

First of all, we tend to work on what users are asking for. This survey shows a lot of interest for web and rust. Second, we’ve been working a ton on const generics. It takes a long, long time. But it’s been a constant effort. We’ll get there. (Placement new has had less attention.)

twic 7y ago
> First of all, we tend to work on what users are asking for. This survey shows a lot of interest for web and rust. If (if!) Rust's mission was to replace C++, that would be a mistake. That's pretty obvious, right? You decide to replace C++. You make a language which isn't a great C++ replacement. You attract users who aren't C++ programmers. They aren't interested in the things C++ programmers are interested in. You build features which don't appeal to C++ programmers. Lather, rinse, repeat. I think at this point, in practice, Rust's goal isn't to replace C++. It's to become a better Rust.
- sgift 7y ago
  > They aren't interested in the things C++ programmers are interested in. This assumption only holds if people didn't want to do systems programming before. Many people who wanted to do it crashed into C++ and then said "yeah okay, not for me", which calls this into question.
- steveklabnik 7y ago
  That’s mission was never to replace C or C++, it’s true. From the very first introduction of Rust to the world: “a complied, concurrent, safe systems language.” Then it was “memory safety without garbage collection”. Now it’s “A language empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software.” Sure there is domain and design overlap, but the goal was never explicitly attracting C or C++ programmers. At least not exclusively.
  - Sammi 7y ago
    There was a mission statement before any of those that went something along the lines of: "Be much better at building a browser with than c++ is" That is still Mozilla's main angle on Rust, but Rust has grown much beyond Mozilla, so this is just history now as you describe.

_bxg1 7y ago

One of the unusual things about Rust is how wide a segment of developers it's trying to please. Everyone from C to JavaScript. It's fascinating how well it's doing so far, but it leads to inevitable compromises at a certain point.

zelly 7y ago

C++ programmers will not switch to Rust. Most of them are older than the maximum age where you can learn new things, let alone be willing (or allowed in their company) to do so. Rust will be most popular with those who are 18 years old now and wanting to try native programming. When you compare the two, tabula rasa, it's just a no-brainer.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Koshkin 7y ago
People used to say the same about C++ vs. Java. (But hey, C++ devs were young back then, and many of them did switch to Java; didn’t hurt C++ though - it was the best who stayed.)
erik_seaberg 7y ago
> maximum age where you can learn new things When is that? Knuth is 82.
Sindisil 7y ago
> older than the maximum age where you can learn new things WTF? Some day, when you've grown up a bit, you might understand just how stupid that post was.
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That just makes the thread even worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
dang 7y ago
Please don't post flamebait to HN. Generational flamebait is among the dumbest and most wretched sort we see here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

pjmlp 7y ago

There are other stuff like "meh, ....". GUI tooling like Qt or XAML, even OWL, MFC, wxWidgets, VCL, if I go pick 90's examples. async/await runtime as part of std. C++20 async/await isn't relying to competing external libraries. Mixed language IDE based development experience, including debugging across languages on the same session, e.g. Java/C++, .NET/C++, Objective-C, Swift/C++.

pornel 7y ago
> C++20 async/await isn't relying to competing external libraries. Standard library is a liability. It's only a matter of time before any non-trivial stuff will turn out to be worse than a 3rd party solution, and won't be able to catch up due to std's constraints (C++ regex being extreme example). Rust has already learned that lesson with channels. So instead of having to say "don't use std's, use the other faster nicer thing", Rust skips over the tech debt part, and recommends the other faster nicer thing immediately. And a clean separation of await from its runtime is actually pretty cool. I'm writing a GTK+ app right now, and I can await button clicks on its event loop.