3 ms·

To be fair, Rust has been a one man passion project for a long time as well.

by est31 5y ago

fsloth 5y ago
Yes, many projects have started like that. Projects can grow and mature. But there really is no crystall ball for that and you should only choose existing industry scale tools for production projects.
- est31 5y ago
  There is lots of valid criticism of Zig. The fact that it's run by a single person is not. hostapd is maintained by a single human. They are responsible for about 69% of all commits in the git repo, 55% if you look at the last year. It's still the most widely deployed WiFi implementation of the world. https://www.openhub.net/p/hostapd/contributors/summary https://www.openhub.net/p/hostapd/contributors/summary
  - fsloth 5y ago
    Changing WiFi stack is less of a problem than changing the implementation language. The perceived fragility of a an element of architecture should be inversely proportional to the effort of replacing the said module chosen. Large effort to replace an element (like the implementation languag) means the element should be of low fragility. This is not an argument against Zig or that it would not become an industrial scale tool. It just does not feel "lindyproof" yet for real work.
elygre 5y ago
This was news to me. Could you explain a bit more, including if you think this is still the case, or when it stopped being so?
- steveklabnik 5y ago
  It was for a few years at the start, but hasn't been since like, 2010.
- est31 5y ago
  Rust used to be developed by Graydon Hoare for years until it became a team project. There is a rust-prehistory repo which shows this: https://github.com/graydon/rust-prehistory/graphs/contributors?from=2006-07-23&to=2010-06-27&type=c https://github.com/graydon/rust-prehistory/graphs/contributo... After the initial commit in the "group" repo, development of the language has switched to a team instead of a single person, with the introduction of additional contributors. This holds even if you only look at the pre-1.0 days which established the core concepts of the Rust language as it stands today (the original language when the team started to work on it was a bit different to 1.0). https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/graphs/contributors?from=2010-06-13&to=2015-05-10&type=c https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/graphs/contributors?from=2... The work since 1.0 can be classified as a massive refinement project, which also does not have a single leader. Zig on the other hand does have a single main contributor/maintainer/creator: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/graphs/contributors?from=2015-08-02&to=2021-05-22&type=c https://github.com/ziglang/zig/graphs/contributors?from=2015...
fsloth 5y ago
But is _now_ an industrial scale tool. Any project can mature to industry scale, but a language needs to be currently industry scale for a current industry deployed project. You can't choose "possibly in the future" industry scale language for current project. Individual insight is often much better than a design by committee, but a language needs a quite robust ecosystem of support from industry bodies at some point to become a viable tool for generic industry scale development.

To be fair, Rust has been a one man passion project for a long time as well.

by est31 5y ago

To be fair, Rust has been a one man passion project for a long time as well.

Yes, many projects have started like that. Projects can grow and mature. But there really is no crystall ball for that and you should only choose existing industry scale tools for production projects.

est31 5y ago
There is lots of valid criticism of Zig. The fact that it's run by a single person is not. hostapd is maintained by a single human. They are responsible for about 69% of all commits in the git repo, 55% if you look at the last year. It's still the most widely deployed WiFi implementation of the world. https://www.openhub.net/p/hostapd/contributors/summary https://www.openhub.net/p/hostapd/contributors/summary
- fsloth 5y ago
  Changing WiFi stack is less of a problem than changing the implementation language. The perceived fragility of a an element of architecture should be inversely proportional to the effort of replacing the said module chosen. Large effort to replace an element (like the implementation languag) means the element should be of low fragility. This is not an argument against Zig or that it would not become an industrial scale tool. It just does not feel "lindyproof" yet for real work.

elygre 5y ago

This was news to me. Could you explain a bit more, including if you think this is still the case, or when it stopped being so?

steveklabnik 5y ago
It was for a few years at the start, but hasn't been since like, 2010.
est31 5y ago
Rust used to be developed by Graydon Hoare for years until it became a team project. There is a rust-prehistory repo which shows this: https://github.com/graydon/rust-prehistory/graphs/contributors?from=2006-07-23&to=2010-06-27&type=c https://github.com/graydon/rust-prehistory/graphs/contributo... After the initial commit in the "group" repo, development of the language has switched to a team instead of a single person, with the introduction of additional contributors. This holds even if you only look at the pre-1.0 days which established the core concepts of the Rust language as it stands today (the original language when the team started to work on it was a bit different to 1.0). https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/graphs/contributors?from=2010-06-13&to=2015-05-10&type=c https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/graphs/contributors?from=2... The work since 1.0 can be classified as a massive refinement project, which also does not have a single leader. Zig on the other hand does have a single main contributor/maintainer/creator: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/graphs/contributors?from=2015-08-02&to=2021-05-22&type=c https://github.com/ziglang/zig/graphs/contributors?from=2015...

fsloth 5y ago

But is _now_ an industrial scale tool. Any project can mature to industry scale, but a language needs to be currently industry scale for a current industry deployed project. You can't choose "possibly in the future" industry scale language for current project. Individual insight is often much better than a design by committee, but a language needs a quite robust ecosystem of support from industry bodies at some point to become a viable tool for generic industry scale development.