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> The language just feels very different from what I'm used to The reason it feels very different is... because it is very different. Then why does it feel off

> The language just feels very different from what I'm used to The reason it feels very different is... because it is very different. Then why does it feel off? Because, while it is very different, it doesn't look very different. Then why doesn't it look very different, when it is very different? That's because, Rust developers spent conscious effort to make Rust look similar. So feeling something is off with Rust is the result of intentional design of Rust developers. In a sense this is dishonest and deceiving, but Rust without similarity engineering would be considerably less popular and hence less successful. Rust's ambition was to change the world, not simply to discover a way to change the world and leaving actual changing to others. (Although changing the world requires discovery first.) So Rust chose to "lie". As an example, Rust's assignment(=) looks similar, but works very different. In fact, since it is very different, it was originally written <-. It was changed to = specifically to make it look similar.

Izkata 6y ago
> it was originally written <-. It was changed to = specifically to make it look similar. That's actually kinda disappointing, I use <- in my pseudocode. (I don't know Rust though, so I can't comment on their choice for the language)
sanxiyn 6y ago
Another example is std::mem::swap. In the world of affine type system which Rust uses, swap is a primitive on an equal footing with assignment (which is actually called move). So naturally, move was written <-, and swap was written <->. But <-> weirded people out, and people complained why Rust has so many special and strange operators. So Rust developers made it look similar to a library function. But it still is a primitive: it is impossible to implement swap yourself in safe code. The result is that people use swap much less than they should, either because they are not aware of it, or because they think it is a specialized library function for special cases. This is significant and large cost. But it is still less than cost of looking weird. All because people won't even try languages with <->. Alas.
nandhinianand 6y ago
One of the side-effects of this is that, Reading Rust code is painful.. it is a bit like reading old perl or haskell code you haven't looked at. Especially when rust is not the day job it gets complicated/painful to remember the distinctions between "=" in say python(that's what i use most) vs "=" in rust. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does contribute to that previous posters' point out finding errors or bugs from libraries being used hard to find or fix. Once again, I don't care much for go, but rust is one of the languages that excite me, but trying to level up in rust(beyond the trivial tutorial code/projects) seems to need a dedicated "maker time' schedule rather than spending 30 mins- 1 hour spare time in between distractions from children.

Izkata 6y ago

> it was originally written <-. It was changed to = specifically to make it look similar. That's actually kinda disappointing, I use <- in my pseudocode. (I don't know Rust though, so I can't comment on their choice for the language)

sanxiyn 6y ago

Another example is std::mem::swap. In the world of affine type system which Rust uses, swap is a primitive on an equal footing with assignment (which is actually called move). So naturally, move was written <-, and swap was written <->. But <-> weirded people out, and people complained why Rust has so many special and strange operators. So Rust developers made it look similar to a library function. But it still is a primitive: it is impossible to implement swap yourself in safe code. The result is that people use swap much less than they should, either because they are not aware of it, or because they think it is a specialized library function for special cases. This is significant and large cost. But it is still less than cost of looking weird. All because people won't even try languages with <->. Alas.

nandhinianand 6y ago

One of the side-effects of this is that, Reading Rust code is painful.. it is a bit like reading old perl or haskell code you haven't looked at. Especially when rust is not the day job it gets complicated/painful to remember the distinctions between "=" in say python(that's what i use most) vs "=" in rust. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does contribute to that previous posters' point out finding errors or bugs from libraries being used hard to find or fix. Once again, I don't care much for go, but rust is one of the languages that excite me, but trying to level up in rust(beyond the trivial tutorial code/projects) seems to need a dedicated "maker time' schedule rather than spending 30 mins- 1 hour spare time in between distractions from children.