3 ms·

I wonder if recency bias combined with the unusually large volume of major changes in 2018 was responsible for Preston Carpenter's "I can't keep up with Rust" p

I wonder if recency bias combined with the unusually large volume of major changes in 2018 was responsible for Preston Carpenter's "I can't keep up with Rust" post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22818150 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22818150)

greatgirl 7y ago
I would say there is an argument to be made on both sides. On one hand rust is only 10 years old with much less corporate backing than Go, but on the other hand you have to be very careful with even small changes if you want the language to be stable in the long run. I can see why people are worried, and it's valid, but I also trust the devs are making correct choices
- steveklabnik 7y ago
  > On one hand rust is only 10 years old Periodization is hard; it's been five years since Rust 1.0. The project is much older, but the language as we know it today has only been around half that time.
- majewsky 7y ago
  > rust [has] much less corporate backing than Go I don't know if that statement is really justified. Sure, Google is a much bigger and more influential company than Mozilla. But when taking the average over the entire company, all-of-Google supports Go much less strongly than all-of-Mozilla supports Rust, and I think that pretty much cancels each other out the company size, so I would consider both langs to have roughly equal corporate backing. I think the actual difference is that Go has a much larger immediate audience than Rust. Go appeals primarily to developers of web service backends, who are coming from Ruby/Python/Perl/PHP and are looking for something faster and statically typed. Rust OTOH initially mostly appealed to systems developers looking for a better C/C++, although that audience has been steadily expanding since then.
  - steveklabnik 7y ago
    Rust is also supported by more than Mozilla these days.
pixel_fcker 7y ago
I think it depends a lot on what part of the language you’re focused on. I’ve been using rust heavily for 3 years and have never felt like things were changing quickly. But I have no interest in the whole futures/async side of things which is where a lot of churn seems to be happening.

greatgirl 7y ago

I would say there is an argument to be made on both sides. On one hand rust is only 10 years old with much less corporate backing than Go, but on the other hand you have to be very careful with even small changes if you want the language to be stable in the long run. I can see why people are worried, and it's valid, but I also trust the devs are making correct choices

steveklabnik 7y ago
> On one hand rust is only 10 years old Periodization is hard; it's been five years since Rust 1.0. The project is much older, but the language as we know it today has only been around half that time.
majewsky 7y ago
> rust [has] much less corporate backing than Go I don't know if that statement is really justified. Sure, Google is a much bigger and more influential company than Mozilla. But when taking the average over the entire company, all-of-Google supports Go much less strongly than all-of-Mozilla supports Rust, and I think that pretty much cancels each other out the company size, so I would consider both langs to have roughly equal corporate backing. I think the actual difference is that Go has a much larger immediate audience than Rust. Go appeals primarily to developers of web service backends, who are coming from Ruby/Python/Perl/PHP and are looking for something faster and statically typed. Rust OTOH initially mostly appealed to systems developers looking for a better C/C++, although that audience has been steadily expanding since then.
- steveklabnik 7y ago
  Rust is also supported by more than Mozilla these days.

pixel_fcker 7y ago

I think it depends a lot on what part of the language you’re focused on. I’ve been using rust heavily for 3 years and have never felt like things were changing quickly. But I have no interest in the whole futures/async side of things which is where a lot of churn seems to be happening.