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I came here to ask, thought not outright say, what is it with all the "... in rust" stuff that keeps getting posted. It's starting to feel more like a marketing

I came here to ask, thought not outright say, what is it with all the "... in rust" stuff that keeps getting posted. It's starting to feel more like a marketing exercise than anything actually software related (happy to be corrected on this though).

monocasa 6y ago
I think it's just that Rust brings a fairly new set of semantics to system code (memory safe, but no GC), and people are pretty excited to rethink large parts of the software stack we all depend on.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  That's but rust has been a known quantity for 5(?) years at least now?
  - johnny22 6y ago
    known to who though? I just told a long time C++ dev about Rust during a discussion about programming languages. He'd never heard of it before, and was quite interested. There are still quite a few folks out there who don't know about Rust, Go, or anything else that's gotten popular over the past few years here.
  - monocasa 6y ago
    Changes in the systems development space take a long time to propagate. A year or so back I found out that I got passed over for an embedded job because I had a big emphasis for Rust on my side projects and they thought it was a toy GCed language and a weird anachronism to put on there.
littlestymaar 6y ago
“marketing” is probably not the right word since there is no money backing it, and it's not a concerted effort either. “Fashion” would fit better I think. Rust has long been something intellectually interesting (solving memory issues found in C and C++, while keeping their low level and with equal performance is quite a feat), but it recently started to become affordable to use (libraries are maturing, there's tons of quality learning material, and even the language itself reached a level of polish that was simply not here before), then many people who have had it somewhere on their radar for a while took the leap, and now share their enthusiasm. And the interested ones who are still waiting for a good occasion to learn it upvote and then it ends up on the front page. And now, you get this kind of low-quality content, which is merely surfing on the trend to get some clicks. This kind of things happened with Go a few years back, or with node before that, such is the fashion life of the programming world.
- dragonsh 6y ago
  Rust solve memory issues of C/C++ at the cost of simplicity and with convoluted, complicated syntax. It will bring in new class of bugs when it becomes popular enough and when large parts of Firefox are rewritten in it. I am not sure why some programmers think, complex and convoluted the syntax, the better the language, especially taking rust as an example. Go has been successful in it’s niche as systems programming language because it’s syntax is easy and can fit the brain easily. A similar simple good programming language I see is zig language which makes memory safety as a choice for the programmer to implement rather than forcing on them with complex borrow checker syntax. On top rely of unsafe C library and code to do anything useful. Zig eschews complexity and embraces C with simple syntax and semantics and provide easy tools to build memory safe code and not shoot the foot. But anyways like democracy in programming complicated languages can win due to majority by marketing or in fashion.
  - monocasa 6y ago
    Zig and golang aren't solving the same problem as rust. Zig isn't memory safe, and golang achieves memory safety with the help of a GC.
    - dragonsh 6y ago
      Go even with GC is very popular as systems programming language in its niche of writing network servers, can’t say the same about Rust except it’s in Fashion on HN, because it looks complex and difficult for programmers. Rust rely on underlying C library for doing anything useful today and still hasn’t demonstrated any real large benefits. Zig helps programmer with tools to write memory safe programs by not shooting in foot with sane and easy syntax and memory allocator. Still like Rust it needs to prove, so time will tell whether marketing and fashion or simplicity and sanity wins. There are enough examples where fashion and marketing with minuscule benefits did win.
      - monocasa 6y ago
        > Go even with GC is very popular as systems programming language in its niche of writing network servers Nine times out of ten a network server isn't systems programming. And even at google, golang is starting to be banned for real systems use by some projects. > Rust rely on underlying C library for doing anything useful today Go relies on libraries everywhere except Linux too, because that's where the stable boundaries are. And even in Linux it was a bad plan for them not to rely on the C lib, because they miss out on other system configuration stuff like locale information because of their choices there. > Zig helps programmer with tools to write memory safe programs by not shooting in foot with sane and easy syntax and memory allocator. So.. the same way C does?
infraredcabbage 6y ago
Consider this. If a program is written in Python, and becomes popular, it is usually a matter of time before it gets rewritten in, and replaced by an implementation in a faster language. There are fast implementations (C) and there are somewhat safe implementations (Python, Java, ...). If I were to place Rust in this hierarcy - it is both fast AND safe, and there's rarely a good reason to replace it, so you've software that's already at the top of the hierarcy. This means that the particular implementation is likely to be the one that doesn't get replaced. "...in Rust" has a lot of implications other than being an exercise in marketing.
- platinumrad 6y ago
  So why not write "fast and safe implementations of popular command line utilities" rather than focusing on the implementation language? If there were a safe and fast implementation of, for example, find in Ada why should it be excluded from this list?
  - infraredcabbage 6y ago
    I don't see any reason why people who write these tools in Ada shouldn't add that to the headline as well. People who are interested in Ada would be even more likely to read the article then.
  - pdimitar 6y ago
    Writing fast and safe implementations of popular CLI utilities is already happening. There's also some advocacy involved which many people obviously find distasteful. To me it's a bonus though: tell me why your tech choice makes a difference, I'll check and maybe learn it. Anything wrong what that?
- johnklos 6y ago
  Except Rust isn't a direct replacement for c. Rust's system requirements are perhaps acceptable for what'll be normal in computers five years from now. We don't need to re-stratify development so that only people with expensive computers with > 4 gigs of memory can compile what they run.
yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
I assume it's just waves of popularity and people getting into particular ecosystems. A few years ago there was a similar wave of writing/rewriting software in go.

monocasa 6y ago

I think it's just that Rust brings a fairly new set of semantics to system code (memory safe, but no GC), and people are pretty excited to rethink large parts of the software stack we all depend on.

mhh__ 6y ago
That's but rust has been a known quantity for 5(?) years at least now?
- johnny22 6y ago
  known to who though? I just told a long time C++ dev about Rust during a discussion about programming languages. He'd never heard of it before, and was quite interested. There are still quite a few folks out there who don't know about Rust, Go, or anything else that's gotten popular over the past few years here.
- monocasa 6y ago
  Changes in the systems development space take a long time to propagate. A year or so back I found out that I got passed over for an embedded job because I had a big emphasis for Rust on my side projects and they thought it was a toy GCed language and a weird anachronism to put on there.

littlestymaar 6y ago

“marketing” is probably not the right word since there is no money backing it, and it's not a concerted effort either. “Fashion” would fit better I think. Rust has long been something intellectually interesting (solving memory issues found in C and C++, while keeping their low level and with equal performance is quite a feat), but it recently started to become affordable to use (libraries are maturing, there's tons of quality learning material, and even the language itself reached a level of polish that was simply not here before), then many people who have had it somewhere on their radar for a while took the leap, and now share their enthusiasm. And the interested ones who are still waiting for a good occasion to learn it upvote and then it ends up on the front page. And now, you get this kind of low-quality content, which is merely surfing on the trend to get some clicks. This kind of things happened with Go a few years back, or with node before that, such is the fashion life of the programming world.

dragonsh 6y ago
Rust solve memory issues of C/C++ at the cost of simplicity and with convoluted, complicated syntax. It will bring in new class of bugs when it becomes popular enough and when large parts of Firefox are rewritten in it. I am not sure why some programmers think, complex and convoluted the syntax, the better the language, especially taking rust as an example. Go has been successful in it’s niche as systems programming language because it’s syntax is easy and can fit the brain easily. A similar simple good programming language I see is zig language which makes memory safety as a choice for the programmer to implement rather than forcing on them with complex borrow checker syntax. On top rely of unsafe C library and code to do anything useful. Zig eschews complexity and embraces C with simple syntax and semantics and provide easy tools to build memory safe code and not shoot the foot. But anyways like democracy in programming complicated languages can win due to majority by marketing or in fashion.
- monocasa 6y ago
  Zig and golang aren't solving the same problem as rust. Zig isn't memory safe, and golang achieves memory safety with the help of a GC.
  - dragonsh 6y ago
    Go even with GC is very popular as systems programming language in its niche of writing network servers, can’t say the same about Rust except it’s in Fashion on HN, because it looks complex and difficult for programmers. Rust rely on underlying C library for doing anything useful today and still hasn’t demonstrated any real large benefits. Zig helps programmer with tools to write memory safe programs by not shooting in foot with sane and easy syntax and memory allocator. Still like Rust it needs to prove, so time will tell whether marketing and fashion or simplicity and sanity wins. There are enough examples where fashion and marketing with minuscule benefits did win.
    - monocasa 6y ago
      > Go even with GC is very popular as systems programming language in its niche of writing network servers Nine times out of ten a network server isn't systems programming. And even at google, golang is starting to be banned for real systems use by some projects. > Rust rely on underlying C library for doing anything useful today Go relies on libraries everywhere except Linux too, because that's where the stable boundaries are. And even in Linux it was a bad plan for them not to rely on the C lib, because they miss out on other system configuration stuff like locale information because of their choices there. > Zig helps programmer with tools to write memory safe programs by not shooting in foot with sane and easy syntax and memory allocator. So.. the same way C does?

infraredcabbage 6y ago

Consider this. If a program is written in Python, and becomes popular, it is usually a matter of time before it gets rewritten in, and replaced by an implementation in a faster language. There are fast implementations (C) and there are somewhat safe implementations (Python, Java, ...). If I were to place Rust in this hierarcy - it is both fast AND safe, and there's rarely a good reason to replace it, so you've software that's already at the top of the hierarcy. This means that the particular implementation is likely to be the one that doesn't get replaced. "...in Rust" has a lot of implications other than being an exercise in marketing.

platinumrad 6y ago
So why not write "fast and safe implementations of popular command line utilities" rather than focusing on the implementation language? If there were a safe and fast implementation of, for example, find in Ada why should it be excluded from this list?
- infraredcabbage 6y ago
  I don't see any reason why people who write these tools in Ada shouldn't add that to the headline as well. People who are interested in Ada would be even more likely to read the article then.
- pdimitar 6y ago
  Writing fast and safe implementations of popular CLI utilities is already happening. There's also some advocacy involved which many people obviously find distasteful. To me it's a bonus though: tell me why your tech choice makes a difference, I'll check and maybe learn it. Anything wrong what that?
johnklos 6y ago
Except Rust isn't a direct replacement for c. Rust's system requirements are perhaps acceptable for what'll be normal in computers five years from now. We don't need to re-stratify development so that only people with expensive computers with > 4 gigs of memory can compile what they run.

yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago

I assume it's just waves of popularity and people getting into particular ecosystems. A few years ago there was a similar wave of writing/rewriting software in go.