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> If you want the "canary in the coal mine", watch what the game developers use for the game engines (they mostly use C++ right now). When Rust starts becoming

> If you want the "canary in the coal mine", watch what the game developers use for the game engines (they mostly use C++ right now). When Rust starts becoming common among game developers, it's got enough momentum for a job ("career" is probably a bit much). I don't see why the entertainment industry would be any more important to pay attention to than any other tech-adjacent industry, such as finance, health care, transportation, etc. If anything, the short-term focus on the next title means that the games industry tends to be relatively late adopters of experimental core tech: witness how more quickly tech companies adopted C++11 as compared to game studios, for example. (This is not to criticize entertainment's conservatism with technology choices: it's a tough business and they are understandably risk-averse.)

mistrial9 6y ago
game programming is performance heavy, while other tech-adjacent industry may be requirements-driven. Also, C++ has existed for what? 30 years? t
- pcwalton 6y ago
  Finance is performance critical too, just to name one. Games are just one small part of the high performance systems space.
  - bsder 6y ago
    Finance is performance heavy in very, very, very narrow points--and NO programming language cuts it in that spot. Those firms use custom silicon. The vast majority of "programming" in finance is finding something to model that is relevant. And that's Python, R, Julia, etc.--all the exploratory tools. Nobody in that space has even heard of Rust.
    - smabie 6y ago
      There's a lot of C++ in financial/trading: custom silicon is only used for the most rudimentary/simple/rote part of the system (think like packet parsing or templating your messages you send to the exchange). Many people are very interested in Rust right now for HFT: C++ is nothing but pain and causes tons of problems.
bsder 6y ago
> I don't see why the entertainment industry would be any more important to pay attention to than any other tech-adjacent industry, such as finance, health care, transportation, etc. If anything, the short-term focus on the next title means that the games industry tends to be relatively late adopters of experimental core tech Um, precisely? Game programming is hardware-bound and short-term focused. Consequently, if Rust is generally superior to C/C++, it will spread very quickly. This would be especially true in games that have a much higher networking component (where the memory and security guarantees start to matter more than just the raw engine performance). Rust is a systems programming language. It is meant to extract efficiency/performance out of hardware. If that isn't your raison d'être, then using a systems programming language of any flavor is counterproductive. So, the problem is that Rust doesn't really compete in "general programming"--it competes mostly in "systems programming". And it has to displace competitors that are mostly "good enough". And it can be done piecemeal so that you don't have to port entire codebases all at once. None of that is a recipe for fast change. And THAT'S PERFECTLY OKAY. Now, all that having been said, the wildcard in all of this is WASM. Rust support for WASM has been stellar when everybody else's has been hot garbage. WASM could be the thing that lets Rust break out of just the "systems programming" niche. That's a big hypothetical, though.
- follower 6y ago
  > the wildcard in all of this is WASM. On a related note, Embark Studios who I mentioned above, just announced they've joined the Bytecode Alliance, an WebAssembly-focused non-profit: https://twitter.com/repi/status/1387393289847025669 https://twitter.com/repi/status/1387393289847025669 The announcement mentioned the use of WASM to help build "...a future of software & creative game worlds that are not limited walled gardens where only we / the devs can add new capabilities or features, want to build an open ecosystem of interconnected software & game components that anyone can use & create with". Essentially, Rust+WASM as a future for player-driven modding/customisation. This is an area I've been exploring in my "WebAssembly Calling Card" project which enables people to create cross-platform personalized dynamic image avatars implemented in any language which can compile to WASM: https://wacc.rancidbacon.com https://wacc.rancidbacon.com I've integrated WACC with the Godot game engine, Rust GUI viewers and the browser--they all use the same avatar ".wasm" file (with examples currently written in C & Rust).

mistrial9 6y ago

game programming is performance heavy, while other tech-adjacent industry may be requirements-driven. Also, C++ has existed for what? 30 years? t

pcwalton 6y ago
Finance is performance critical too, just to name one. Games are just one small part of the high performance systems space.
- bsder 6y ago
  Finance is performance heavy in very, very, very narrow points--and NO programming language cuts it in that spot. Those firms use custom silicon. The vast majority of "programming" in finance is finding something to model that is relevant. And that's Python, R, Julia, etc.--all the exploratory tools. Nobody in that space has even heard of Rust.
  - smabie 6y ago
    There's a lot of C++ in financial/trading: custom silicon is only used for the most rudimentary/simple/rote part of the system (think like packet parsing or templating your messages you send to the exchange). Many people are very interested in Rust right now for HFT: C++ is nothing but pain and causes tons of problems.

bsder 6y ago

> I don't see why the entertainment industry would be any more important to pay attention to than any other tech-adjacent industry, such as finance, health care, transportation, etc. If anything, the short-term focus on the next title means that the games industry tends to be relatively late adopters of experimental core tech Um, precisely? Game programming is hardware-bound and short-term focused. Consequently, if Rust is generally superior to C/C++, it will spread very quickly. This would be especially true in games that have a much higher networking component (where the memory and security guarantees start to matter more than just the raw engine performance). Rust is a systems programming language. It is meant to extract efficiency/performance out of hardware. If that isn't your raison d'être, then using a systems programming language of any flavor is counterproductive. So, the problem is that Rust doesn't really compete in "general programming"--it competes mostly in "systems programming". And it has to displace competitors that are mostly "good enough". And it can be done piecemeal so that you don't have to port entire codebases all at once. None of that is a recipe for fast change. And THAT'S PERFECTLY OKAY. Now, all that having been said, the wildcard in all of this is WASM. Rust support for WASM has been stellar when everybody else's has been hot garbage. WASM could be the thing that lets Rust break out of just the "systems programming" niche. That's a big hypothetical, though.

follower 6y ago
> the wildcard in all of this is WASM. On a related note, Embark Studios who I mentioned above, just announced they've joined the Bytecode Alliance, an WebAssembly-focused non-profit: https://twitter.com/repi/status/1387393289847025669 https://twitter.com/repi/status/1387393289847025669 The announcement mentioned the use of WASM to help build "...a future of software & creative game worlds that are not limited walled gardens where only we / the devs can add new capabilities or features, want to build an open ecosystem of interconnected software & game components that anyone can use & create with". Essentially, Rust+WASM as a future for player-driven modding/customisation. This is an area I've been exploring in my "WebAssembly Calling Card" project which enables people to create cross-platform personalized dynamic image avatars implemented in any language which can compile to WASM: https://wacc.rancidbacon.com https://wacc.rancidbacon.com I've integrated WACC with the Godot game engine, Rust GUI viewers and the browser--they all use the same avatar ".wasm" file (with examples currently written in C & Rust).