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Am I the only one who feels _less_ inclined to use a program if they use 'written in rust' as a selling point? I mean, I very rarely see non-rust projects say

Am I the only one who feels _less_ inclined to use a program if they use 'written in rust' as a selling point? I mean, I very rarely see non-rust projects say "Written in X!" as a selling point for the end user (why would an end user care?), and the campaign to re-write everything in rust is similarly irritating. I've never explored or read up on the rust community, but the sheer insistence that I see jutting into everything from the outside turns me off.

steveklabnik 6y ago
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=written+in https://hn.algolia.com/?q=written+in (this is by top score, you can also see this by date) Lots of stuff where X != Rust. > (why would an end user care?) They probably don't. But, on GitHub, where programmers go, and on a forum like this, with lots of developers, this means something to many folks here.
- unityByFreedom 6y ago
  Non-rust programmer here, written in X does not tell me anything about the app.
  - steveklabnik 6y ago
    I mean, it tells you that if you wanted to contribute, you'd also have to learn Rust before being able to do so. Also, beyond that, note my "many"; sure, it doesn't mean anything to you. It feels weird to get upset about something that supposedly has no meaning, though. When I see something that's "written in X" and I don't care about X, I just move on with my day. If I post about how much I don't care about X, it really seems like I do actually care about X, otherwise, I wouldn't take the time to complain about it. (The OP of this thread said that they did care, negatively. And you didn't explicitly say you don't care either. But this attitude is common and is also elsewhere in this thread so, let me just finally jump off this soapbox real quick...)
    - unityByFreedom 6y ago
      I agree with the other poster that it doesn't add anything to the title. I'm not "upset" about it, this is simply a side discussion about what goes in a title. I wanted to add my thoughts and now I'm done.
  - buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
    Surely you can think of one thing that it tells you
StavrosK 6y ago
If I see that something is written in Rust, I'm predisposed positively because I know it'll be a single binary I can easily install, it'll be fast and it'll usually be well-designed (Rust and good cli design correlate, for some reason).
- faitswulff 6y ago
  Same. I suspect the correlation is because of the crate ecosystem and cargo making it easy to use a good TUI framework.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    I think it's mostly because the people who write Rust now are the same kinds of people who care about the cli.
- grep_name 6y ago
  That's a lot more compelling to me than the safety argument I usually see. Maybe I'll look into it more at some point in the future
  - drchickensalad 6y ago
    Check out ripgrep, bat, exa, fd; or just google top rust cli's etc. They are so, so good.
    - 0xEFF 6y ago
      I’ve recently started syncing these single binaries along with zsh dotfiles using them to all the machines I use with syncthing and have been extremely happy with the result. Just had to set PATH=$HOME/Sync/$(uname)/$(uname -m):$PATH and haven’t been without a tool since.
- packetlost 6y ago
  Similar for Go for me. I personally like Go and will go out of my way to use tools written in it because I understand the tooling and the language well enough that building from source is painless.
barnabee 6y ago
When I’m looking for a new open source application, for various reasons of experience and preferences about what I work with, I often look for and prefer relatively new projects in compiled, statically typed languages that are reasonably active and mature codebases. That means the solution often ends up being written Go, Rust or C/C++, to the extent that Go and Rust specifically also turn out to be good signalling that the application may meet my other requirements, partly simply because they are relatively new languages. They also seem to signal better thought out and more “serious” solutions, perhaps because of the barrier to entry they present vs interpreted and scripting languages. So yeah. Rust or other languages certainly aren’t a requirement but they do sometimes present some useful signalling.
gmadsen 6y ago
Statically checked safety is a big deal. I mean it can have a crappy UI, and not do what you want it to, but at least you won't have a memory leak. I think for most applications, written in rust shouldn't be a selling point, but things such a cURL can definitely benefit from it
DennisP 6y ago
If it's open source, the audience isn't just end users, it's also programmers. They might be interested in looking at the code, reusing it in some way, or even contributing to the project.
sanderjd 6y ago
It seems cyclical. There was a time when it was "written in Go" that was on the bingo card. I remember this being an original hype point for docker, for instance. I do agree that I'd rather see the technology choice not highlighted so much, though. But it really is a proxy for some things that matter to me: if it is in Rust, I expect it to be a single binary I can easily install and which starts up quickly and performs well (as opposed to, say, javascript, python, ruby, or java programs), but is likely to suffer very few security problems (as opposed to, say, a C or C++ program), and has a decent shot at growing an active community, which I may be able to contribute to. A lot of these things apply to other technologies (like the aforementioned Go) as well, but it I do feel like I get some information by knowing the technology. Maybe the better approach would be to enumerate benefits rather than saying what the technology is, even if the benefits flow from the technology choice.
naikrovek 6y ago
You are definitely not the only one. Nothing has put me off of Rust more than "Rust people". The same thing happened to me with Python over 20 years ago and I've successfully (and happily) avoided that language for over 20 years because of just how unbelievably, unstoppably "effervescent" Python people were in the late 1990s. If Python were 10% as good as those people said is was, it would be, by a wide margin, mankind's greatest achievement for the next 10 millennia. I get the exact same vibe from "Rustaceans."
- pulse7 6y ago
  They are just (a bit too much) excited...

steveklabnik 6y ago

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=written+in https://hn.algolia.com/?q=written+in (this is by top score, you can also see this by date) Lots of stuff where X != Rust. > (why would an end user care?) They probably don't. But, on GitHub, where programmers go, and on a forum like this, with lots of developers, this means something to many folks here.

unityByFreedom 6y ago
Non-rust programmer here, written in X does not tell me anything about the app.
- steveklabnik 6y ago
  I mean, it tells you that if you wanted to contribute, you'd also have to learn Rust before being able to do so. Also, beyond that, note my "many"; sure, it doesn't mean anything to you. It feels weird to get upset about something that supposedly has no meaning, though. When I see something that's "written in X" and I don't care about X, I just move on with my day. If I post about how much I don't care about X, it really seems like I do actually care about X, otherwise, I wouldn't take the time to complain about it. (The OP of this thread said that they did care, negatively. And you didn't explicitly say you don't care either. But this attitude is common and is also elsewhere in this thread so, let me just finally jump off this soapbox real quick...)
  - unityByFreedom 6y ago
    I agree with the other poster that it doesn't add anything to the title. I'm not "upset" about it, this is simply a side discussion about what goes in a title. I wanted to add my thoughts and now I'm done.
- buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
  Surely you can think of one thing that it tells you

StavrosK 6y ago

If I see that something is written in Rust, I'm predisposed positively because I know it'll be a single binary I can easily install, it'll be fast and it'll usually be well-designed (Rust and good cli design correlate, for some reason).

faitswulff 6y ago
Same. I suspect the correlation is because of the crate ecosystem and cargo making it easy to use a good TUI framework.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  I think it's mostly because the people who write Rust now are the same kinds of people who care about the cli.
grep_name 6y ago
That's a lot more compelling to me than the safety argument I usually see. Maybe I'll look into it more at some point in the future
- drchickensalad 6y ago
  Check out ripgrep, bat, exa, fd; or just google top rust cli's etc. They are so, so good.
  - 0xEFF 6y ago
    I’ve recently started syncing these single binaries along with zsh dotfiles using them to all the machines I use with syncthing and have been extremely happy with the result. Just had to set PATH=$HOME/Sync/$(uname)/$(uname -m):$PATH and haven’t been without a tool since.
packetlost 6y ago
Similar for Go for me. I personally like Go and will go out of my way to use tools written in it because I understand the tooling and the language well enough that building from source is painless.

barnabee 6y ago

When I’m looking for a new open source application, for various reasons of experience and preferences about what I work with, I often look for and prefer relatively new projects in compiled, statically typed languages that are reasonably active and mature codebases. That means the solution often ends up being written Go, Rust or C/C++, to the extent that Go and Rust specifically also turn out to be good signalling that the application may meet my other requirements, partly simply because they are relatively new languages. They also seem to signal better thought out and more “serious” solutions, perhaps because of the barrier to entry they present vs interpreted and scripting languages. So yeah. Rust or other languages certainly aren’t a requirement but they do sometimes present some useful signalling.

gmadsen 6y ago

Statically checked safety is a big deal. I mean it can have a crappy UI, and not do what you want it to, but at least you won't have a memory leak. I think for most applications, written in rust shouldn't be a selling point, but things such a cURL can definitely benefit from it

DennisP 6y ago

If it's open source, the audience isn't just end users, it's also programmers. They might be interested in looking at the code, reusing it in some way, or even contributing to the project.

sanderjd 6y ago

It seems cyclical. There was a time when it was "written in Go" that was on the bingo card. I remember this being an original hype point for docker, for instance. I do agree that I'd rather see the technology choice not highlighted so much, though. But it really is a proxy for some things that matter to me: if it is in Rust, I expect it to be a single binary I can easily install and which starts up quickly and performs well (as opposed to, say, javascript, python, ruby, or java programs), but is likely to suffer very few security problems (as opposed to, say, a C or C++ program), and has a decent shot at growing an active community, which I may be able to contribute to. A lot of these things apply to other technologies (like the aforementioned Go) as well, but it I do feel like I get some information by knowing the technology. Maybe the better approach would be to enumerate benefits rather than saying what the technology is, even if the benefits flow from the technology choice.

naikrovek 6y ago

You are definitely not the only one. Nothing has put me off of Rust more than "Rust people". The same thing happened to me with Python over 20 years ago and I've successfully (and happily) avoided that language for over 20 years because of just how unbelievably, unstoppably "effervescent" Python people were in the late 1990s. If Python were 10% as good as those people said is was, it would be, by a wide margin, mankind's greatest achievement for the next 10 millennia. I get the exact same vibe from "Rustaceans."

pulse7 6y ago
They are just (a bit too much) excited...