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What's funny is that Rust, in its short life so far, is already popping up in important projects. Firefox, obviously. cURL now optionally uses Rust for... somet

What's funny is that Rust, in its short life so far, is already popping up in important projects. Firefox, obviously. cURL now optionally uses Rust for... something. Big companies are using it: Microsoft, Dropbox, etc. Some Linux libraries (there was an image library for Gnome/GTK, IIRC). Even the Linux kernel may allow certain kinds of modules to be written in Rust. But everyone still shits on "Rust Evangelists" when they bring it up. You just can't win! :D

phillipcarter 6y ago
I think the biggest reason for that is that Rust is fundamentally a systems programming language that is significantly more productive and safer than C/C++.
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  I don't think "more productive" is clear (in the sense of building software on less money). Measuring engineering productivity is basically impossible at this point. But it clearly eliminates a whole class of footguns that are tolerated in C++ just because we need a fast systems programming language. This is easy to measure because it refers to properties of applications (performance and vulnerability-density) rather than properties of the development process. Rust also seems to reduce the need for a ridiculous guru at your company to help keep programs correct. That is easy to identify and measure. Haskell doesn't seem to do this. If I imagine running a team of 80 people on a Haskell application vs a Java application, do I feel like I'll need fewer Haskell gurus? No.
phkahler 6y ago
>> What's funny is that Rust, in its short life so far, is already popping up in important projects. Rust was sort of co-developed along with Servo with the intent to be used by Mozilla. For all the others using Rust, it solves immediate problems that people have been having for years. When you're going up the learning curve and fighting the borrow checker, you can rest assured that the pain is in exchange for eliminating entire classes of bugs. That is an unusual situation in the world of languages.
steveklabnik 6y ago
> cURL now optionally uses Rust for... something. You can optionally choose to use a Rust-based HTTP stack. https://github.com/curl/curl/wiki/Hyper https://github.com/curl/curl/wiki/Hyper
jancsika 6y ago
> there was an image library for Gnome/GTK, IIRC librsvg is one. I think it was originally written in C, and it apparently approaching being fully Rust. Rust claims very loudly, repeatedly, and apparently with honesty that "gotta go fast" and safety are language design goals and features. So I'd imagine even a developer who just wants to get their hands dirty with Rust would be willing to do battle with the borrow checker since there's a good chance they'll eventually hit those goals that they share in common with the language itself. Does Haskell have "gotta go fast" as a central language feature? If not, that'd be a real gamble for an SVG renderer. After all, what's the use of a library that produces the output you'd expect, but also at a speed you'd expect for a kludgy, over-engineered, text-based vector image format? > But everyone still shits on "Rust Evangelists" when they bring it up. Yes, but the language forces them to shit on it for reasons other than "not being fast." :) Edit: clarification

phillipcarter 6y ago

I think the biggest reason for that is that Rust is fundamentally a systems programming language that is significantly more productive and safer than C/C++.

UncleMeat 6y ago
I don't think "more productive" is clear (in the sense of building software on less money). Measuring engineering productivity is basically impossible at this point. But it clearly eliminates a whole class of footguns that are tolerated in C++ just because we need a fast systems programming language. This is easy to measure because it refers to properties of applications (performance and vulnerability-density) rather than properties of the development process. Rust also seems to reduce the need for a ridiculous guru at your company to help keep programs correct. That is easy to identify and measure. Haskell doesn't seem to do this. If I imagine running a team of 80 people on a Haskell application vs a Java application, do I feel like I'll need fewer Haskell gurus? No.

phkahler 6y ago

>> What's funny is that Rust, in its short life so far, is already popping up in important projects. Rust was sort of co-developed along with Servo with the intent to be used by Mozilla. For all the others using Rust, it solves immediate problems that people have been having for years. When you're going up the learning curve and fighting the borrow checker, you can rest assured that the pain is in exchange for eliminating entire classes of bugs. That is an unusual situation in the world of languages.

steveklabnik 6y ago

> cURL now optionally uses Rust for... something. You can optionally choose to use a Rust-based HTTP stack. https://github.com/curl/curl/wiki/Hyper https://github.com/curl/curl/wiki/Hyper

jancsika 6y ago

> there was an image library for Gnome/GTK, IIRC librsvg is one. I think it was originally written in C, and it apparently approaching being fully Rust. Rust claims very loudly, repeatedly, and apparently with honesty that "gotta go fast" and safety are language design goals and features. So I'd imagine even a developer who just wants to get their hands dirty with Rust would be willing to do battle with the borrow checker since there's a good chance they'll eventually hit those goals that they share in common with the language itself. Does Haskell have "gotta go fast" as a central language feature? If not, that'd be a real gamble for an SVG renderer. After all, what's the use of a library that produces the output you'd expect, but also at a speed you'd expect for a kludgy, over-engineered, text-based vector image format? > But everyone still shits on "Rust Evangelists" when they bring it up. Yes, but the language forces them to shit on it for reasons other than "not being fast." :) Edit: clarification