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A few months ago I tried Rust but found that the tooling like auto completion and highlighting where still a bit alpha. IIRC I used VSCode with the most popular

A few months ago I tried Rust but found that the tooling like auto completion and highlighting where still a bit alpha. IIRC I used VSCode with the most popular Rust plugin at the time. Did I miss something or is there some progress being made in that respect?

laszlokorte 6y ago
not sure which plugin you used but rust-analyzer is the way to go.
steveklabnik 6y ago
rust-analyzer gets better and better every week.
hobofan 6y ago
Sounds a bit strange. I'm using rust-analyzer in combination with TabNine (which both have integrations in every major editor), and it's among the best completion I've encountered across languages (though there are some limitations when it comes to proc-macros). Maybe it was still downloading some required binaries in the background when you were trying it out?
- trevyn 6y ago
  I’d love to see an open-source clone of TabNine.
stusmall 6y ago
As others have said, I'd be curious what plug in you use. The state of things is pretty good. I'm using the IntelliJ Rust plugin and love it. It also provides pretty good inline annotation of inferred types which I find to be a big time saver.
ZeroCool2u 6y ago
CLion with the Rust plugin is pretty great.
heavyset_go 6y ago
I use Kate, which is really bare bones, with a Rust LSP server and haven't had a problem with completion or highlighting.
praveenperera 6y ago
Yes sounds like you used the older RLS plugin. Which currently has 717K installs. Try the newer and future default plugin, rust-analyzer (currently only 110K installs). It’s much better and improving each week. With RA and VSCode the rust developer experience is fantastic. Link: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=matklad.rust-analyzer https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=matklad....
ameixaseca 6y ago
I don't want this to sound like a criticism, but I would like to understand your point of view: do you really consider this a reason for choosing a language over any other? Even if you had to use notepad to program - or had very basic syntax highlighting - wouldn't be what the language provides a more compelling point to make these choices?
- steveklabnik 6y ago
  There are a lot of people for who this is true, yes. It has come up consistently on our annual survey. Usability is a feature, and many people consider a language’s IDE support to be a critical aspect of usability.
  - mlindner 6y ago
    It's certainly an interesting position, from my perspective, as I (and probably OP) have worked our entire professional lives without a syntax checker or any other form of IDE other than simple things like autoindent.
    - steveklabnik 6y ago
      Yes. I too have been pretty anti-IDE most of my history. But I think a lot of it comes down to tools and culture; Ruby (which I have done for the first half of my profesional life) is extremely hard to give good tooling for. So the tools are bad, so they aren't useful. So you don't use them. Contrast with a language like Java, which is very amenable to a lot of tooling, and kinda sorta needs it to make the language more usable. If that's your background, you can't imagine not having that tooling, because, well, you're used to it. I will say that I have been playing around with using more IDE-like things, and even though it's culturally pretty foreign to me, I understand the appeal. And as I'm getting more used to it, I get annoyed when it's not there, and then remember how I used to pooh pooh people who required all those fancy features. So... I get it. These days at least.
      - kamilafsar 6y ago
rsynnott 6y ago
The IntelliJ plugin is pretty good.

laszlokorte 6y ago

not sure which plugin you used but rust-analyzer is the way to go.

steveklabnik 6y ago

rust-analyzer gets better and better every week.

hobofan 6y ago

Sounds a bit strange. I'm using rust-analyzer in combination with TabNine (which both have integrations in every major editor), and it's among the best completion I've encountered across languages (though there are some limitations when it comes to proc-macros). Maybe it was still downloading some required binaries in the background when you were trying it out?

trevyn 6y ago
I’d love to see an open-source clone of TabNine.

stusmall 6y ago

As others have said, I'd be curious what plug in you use. The state of things is pretty good. I'm using the IntelliJ Rust plugin and love it. It also provides pretty good inline annotation of inferred types which I find to be a big time saver.

ZeroCool2u 6y ago

CLion with the Rust plugin is pretty great.

heavyset_go 6y ago

I use Kate, which is really bare bones, with a Rust LSP server and haven't had a problem with completion or highlighting.

praveenperera 6y ago

Yes sounds like you used the older RLS plugin. Which currently has 717K installs. Try the newer and future default plugin, rust-analyzer (currently only 110K installs). It’s much better and improving each week. With RA and VSCode the rust developer experience is fantastic. Link: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=matklad.rust-analyzer https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=matklad....

ameixaseca 6y ago

I don't want this to sound like a criticism, but I would like to understand your point of view: do you really consider this a reason for choosing a language over any other? Even if you had to use notepad to program - or had very basic syntax highlighting - wouldn't be what the language provides a more compelling point to make these choices?

steveklabnik 6y ago
There are a lot of people for who this is true, yes. It has come up consistently on our annual survey. Usability is a feature, and many people consider a language’s IDE support to be a critical aspect of usability.
- mlindner 6y ago
  It's certainly an interesting position, from my perspective, as I (and probably OP) have worked our entire professional lives without a syntax checker or any other form of IDE other than simple things like autoindent.
  - steveklabnik 6y ago
    Yes. I too have been pretty anti-IDE most of my history. But I think a lot of it comes down to tools and culture; Ruby (which I have done for the first half of my profesional life) is extremely hard to give good tooling for. So the tools are bad, so they aren't useful. So you don't use them. Contrast with a language like Java, which is very amenable to a lot of tooling, and kinda sorta needs it to make the language more usable. If that's your background, you can't imagine not having that tooling, because, well, you're used to it. I will say that I have been playing around with using more IDE-like things, and even though it's culturally pretty foreign to me, I understand the appeal. And as I'm getting more used to it, I get annoyed when it's not there, and then remember how I used to pooh pooh people who required all those fancy features. So... I get it. These days at least.
    - kamilafsar 6y ago

rsynnott 6y ago

The IntelliJ plugin is pretty good.