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steveklabnik 6y ago
I think it depends on what "re-write it in Rust" means. Some people say that it means folks specifically asking for a project to be re-written in Rust. Others seem to imply that any new code written in Rust counts. To illustrate the difference, ripgrep would be the latter, but not the former. If we're talking about the former, I think the actual instances of this are few and far between, and are complained about far more than actually occurs. At one point I was actually trying to get hard data on this, but there really were only a handful of times I could find this seriously occurring, and they were pretty easily dismissed. The folks who talk about it like a plague of some kind never seem to show their evidence, or link to one or two examples at best. If we're talking about the latter, it shouldn't be surprising that folks who like a language write software in that language. That's why languages exist. I don't know why some people really want to say that folks cannot write whatever software they want in whatever language they want.
- capableweb 6y ago
  > At one point I was actually trying to get hard data on this, but there really were only a handful of times I could find this seriously occurring This is probably depending on the environment. Corporate environments would move very slow, open source kind of fast and SMB/SME somewhere in the middle. All of them plagued by cargoculting, but especially average performing SMB/SME are the most guilty, and also where I've seen the most "Hey, we should probably rewrite this service in Rust because it'll be better for sure" since some years back.
  - steveklabnik 6y ago
    Yes, this is a good point, for sure.
    - capableweb 6y ago
      I actually stumbled upon[1] a data source for you! Seems there is some activity in the "Rewrite it in Rust" domain, and there is a collection of it being suggested in a lot of places: https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR - [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26561093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26561093
      - steveklabnik 6y ago
        Right, but this is what I mean. If this is the best collection of stuff, well, it doesn't make a compelling argument that there is a huge scourge of this around the internet. Even if we assume these are all legit issues, there have been 66 total in the five years this repository has existed. That is a miniscule number. If we actually look at the issues, many of them are not instances of an outsider demanding a project being rewritten in Rust. Let's look at the most recent five issues, to pick a random sample: * https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/62 https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/62 This is showing a branch that the team themselves made. It is not an outside demand to re-write it in Rust. * https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/59 https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/59 This one does appear to be legit. Not a ton of drama here, a polite conversation that was closed without issue, even though its existence is generally a bit annoying, yes. * https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/58 https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/58 This again is someone who is doing this for their own project. * https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/57 https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/57 This is a transcription of a joke in a telegram chat. * https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/53 https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/53 This is a person who opened an issue on this project, but does not appear to have asked upstream about it. * https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/51 https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/51 This one is amusing, given the article, but again, isn't an upstream request. Let's look at recent closed issues: * https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/67 https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/67 This is a person who made this issue, then two minutes later, opened an issue being a jerk on the target repo. Yes, that is annoying for the person who had the issue opened, but is hardly an indication that these are real requests. This person is trolling. The next seven most recent closed issues are someone who has just opened issues with random technologies they thought they'd be funny. I was only gonna do five, like the opened issues, but it's clear this is a series, so have a bonus two. So already, we have like, let's round it up: two real issues here, out of fourteen. I am not convinced. (Your hacker news link seems like nonsense to me?)

[deleted]

I think it depends on what "re-write it in Rust" means. Some people say that it means folks specifically asking for a project to be re-written in Rust. Others seem to imply that any new code written in Rust counts. To illustrate the difference, ripgrep would be the latter, but not the former. If we're talking about the former, I think the actual instances of this are few and far between, and are complained about far more than actually occurs. At one point I was actually trying to get hard data on this, but there really were only a handful of times I could find this seriously occurring, and they were pretty easily dismissed. The folks who talk about it like a plague of some kind never seem to show their evidence, or link to one or two examples at best. If we're talking about the latter, it shouldn't be surprising that folks who like a language write software in that language. That's why languages exist. I don't know why some people really want to say that folks cannot write whatever software they want in whatever language they want.

capableweb 6y ago
> At one point I was actually trying to get hard data on this, but there really were only a handful of times I could find this seriously occurring This is probably depending on the environment. Corporate environments would move very slow, open source kind of fast and SMB/SME somewhere in the middle. All of them plagued by cargoculting, but especially average performing SMB/SME are the most guilty, and also where I've seen the most "Hey, we should probably rewrite this service in Rust because it'll be better for sure" since some years back.
- steveklabnik 6y ago
  Yes, this is a good point, for sure.
  - capableweb 6y ago
    I actually stumbled upon[1] a data source for you! Seems there is some activity in the "Rewrite it in Rust" domain, and there is a collection of it being suggested in a lot of places: https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR - [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26561093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26561093
    - steveklabnik 6y ago
      Right, but this is what I mean. If this is the best collection of stuff, well, it doesn't make a compelling argument that there is a huge scourge of this around the internet. Even if we assume these are all legit issues, there have been 66 total in the five years this repository has existed. That is a miniscule number. If we actually look at the issues, many of them are not instances of an outsider demanding a project being rewritten in Rust. Let's look at the most recent five issues, to pick a random sample: * https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/62 https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/62 This is showing a branch that the team themselves made. It is not an outside demand to re-write it in Rust. * https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/59 https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/59 This one does appear to be legit. Not a ton of drama here, a polite conversation that was closed without issue, even though its existence is generally a bit annoying, yes. * https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/58 https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/58 This again is someone who is doing this for their own project. * https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/57 https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/57 This is a transcription of a joke in a telegram chat. * https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/53 https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/53 This is a person who opened an issue on this project, but does not appear to have asked upstream about it. * https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/51 https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/51 This one is amusing, given the article, but again, isn't an upstream request. Let's look at recent closed issues: * https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/67 https://github.com/ansuz/RIIR/issues/67 This is a person who made this issue, then two minutes later, opened an issue being a jerk on the target repo. Yes, that is annoying for the person who had the issue opened, but is hardly an indication that these are real requests. This person is trolling. The next seven most recent closed issues are someone who has just opened issues with random technologies they thought they'd be funny. I was only gonna do five, like the opened issues, but it's clear this is a series, so have a bonus two. So already, we have like, let's round it up: two real issues here, out of fourteen. I am not convinced. (Your hacker news link seems like nonsense to me?)