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> The language that boosts productivity for 90% of use cases is going to win over the language that gives you more fine grained control to allow you to handle t

by rapsey 5y ago

> The language that boosts productivity for 90% of use cases is going to win over the language that gives you more fine grained control to allow you to handle the remaining 10%. Actually no. The most important qualities for a language to quickly gain popularity are: * Low barrier to entry * Who is backing it (Go, Java, C#) * What platforms it opens up (Swift,ObjC,Kotlin/Java) that require that language.

littlestymaar 5y ago
And Rust has 2. and 3. which is more than Python for instance, which is immensely successful despite only having 1.
- handrous 5y ago
  Rust has #3 going for it? Which major platforms are Rust-native or Rust-first, as with Java/Kotlin on Android, Javascript on the Web, ObjC/Swift on iOS, et c.?
  - littlestymaar 5y ago
    Opening native development to a big number of people who would have otherwise never touched it. This may not be obvious at first, but AFAIK the majority of Rust users come from web languages (mostly JavaScript, Ruby and Python) and the fraction of programmers doing native/low-level stuff had been declining for decades and Rust is bringing a lot of new people to it. (Also webassembly, but it's a much smaller niche at the moment)
    - handrous 5y ago
      I took rapsey's item #3 to mean that languages tend to grow well when they're required—or at the very least considered the first-class option—for accessing a desirable ecosystem or platform, which does seem to be one major way language adoption grows. Not just that they let developers do things they maybe weren't before (but could have been, in another language).
      - littlestymaar 5y ago
        Yes, I think it's literally what was meant in the original comment, but I've given it a slightly broader definition because I think this aspect is a huge factor in Rust's popularity.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    Rust can be "native" on any platform that supports C/C++, provided only that the necessary pieces on the LLVM side are in place. There are even folks who will help you deploy Rust on console hardware where no publicly-available support can ever exist because the official C/C++ API's are kept secret and only made available to those who sign highly-restrictive NDA's.
    - handrous 5y ago
      Right, it's portable, but that's not what 3 was about. It's about being required for first-class access to a desirable platform. It's why Objective-C gained strong, renewed interest when iPhone apps in that language were announced. It's why anyone cares about Javascript. It's why Kotlin adoption grew very fast when Google announced support for it on Android, or why Swift went from nothing to fairly high levels of use practically overnight. That kind of thing.
- rapsey 5y ago
  1 is the most important. It also has 3 for machine learning. Rust barely has 2 and 3. Mozilla never pushed it much and it also is not a huge employer. It has 3 if you strech the definition.
  - littlestymaar 5y ago
    > It also has 3 for machine learning. Python was popular way before machine learning went mainstream. > 1 is the most important. 1. is super important, but keep in mind that Python having a much higher barrier to entry than PHP on the web didn't stop it from becoming popular in that field. Also 1. is really context dependent, and even if Rust has a bigger barrier to entry than Python, it has a much smaller one that its direct competitors (C and C++) because of its documentation, learning material, compiler error messages and dependency management. Regarding 2. you must have missed the news: Rust is now officially pushed by Microsoft, AWS, Google and Facebook. In fact you'd have difficulties to find languages with stronger corporate backing than Rust today apart from C# and Java.
    - rapsey 5y ago
      It's never winner takes all. There is space enough for a whole lot of languages. Keep in mind in the early days of Python it was pushed by Google. They specifically looked and advertised for python developers. That is more of a push than any company ever did for Rust. Rust barrier to entry compared to C/C++ is debatable. Lots of universities for instance have courses in them. They have a whole lot of books and a large community out there. I disagree about 2 and Rust. Those companies have projects in them and they are a part of rust foundation. They are however not mass employing Rust developers and only AWS has components for core stuff in Rust. Of course it is debatable for what is a core component.
      - littlestymaar 5y ago
        > Keep in mind in the early days of Python it was pushed by Google. You know Python is older than Google by several years right? ;) When this happened, Python was older than Rust today. > That is more of a push than any company ever did for Rust. Microsoft recently made Rust a officially language for developing Windows Native apps[1] and they've advertised the use of the language quite a bit during the past year. Google just released its new operating system developed with as much Rust as C and C++ combined[2]. Also, Facebook and AWS have hired members of the Rust development team after Mozilla's layoff last year to continue their work on Rust. [1]: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2021/05/06/announcing-rust-for-windows-v0-9/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2021/05/06/announ... [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27274820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27274820

by rapsey 5y ago

littlestymaar 5y ago

And Rust has 2. and 3. which is more than Python for instance, which is immensely successful despite only having 1.

handrous 5y ago
Rust has #3 going for it? Which major platforms are Rust-native or Rust-first, as with Java/Kotlin on Android, Javascript on the Web, ObjC/Swift on iOS, et c.?
- littlestymaar 5y ago
  Opening native development to a big number of people who would have otherwise never touched it. This may not be obvious at first, but AFAIK the majority of Rust users come from web languages (mostly JavaScript, Ruby and Python) and the fraction of programmers doing native/low-level stuff had been declining for decades and Rust is bringing a lot of new people to it. (Also webassembly, but it's a much smaller niche at the moment)
  - handrous 5y ago
    I took rapsey's item #3 to mean that languages tend to grow well when they're required—or at the very least considered the first-class option—for accessing a desirable ecosystem or platform, which does seem to be one major way language adoption grows. Not just that they let developers do things they maybe weren't before (but could have been, in another language).
    - littlestymaar 5y ago
      Yes, I think it's literally what was meant in the original comment, but I've given it a slightly broader definition because I think this aspect is a huge factor in Rust's popularity.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Rust can be "native" on any platform that supports C/C++, provided only that the necessary pieces on the LLVM side are in place. There are even folks who will help you deploy Rust on console hardware where no publicly-available support can ever exist because the official C/C++ API's are kept secret and only made available to those who sign highly-restrictive NDA's.
  - handrous 5y ago
    Right, it's portable, but that's not what 3 was about. It's about being required for first-class access to a desirable platform. It's why Objective-C gained strong, renewed interest when iPhone apps in that language were announced. It's why anyone cares about Javascript. It's why Kotlin adoption grew very fast when Google announced support for it on Android, or why Swift went from nothing to fairly high levels of use practically overnight. That kind of thing.
rapsey 5y ago
1 is the most important. It also has 3 for machine learning. Rust barely has 2 and 3. Mozilla never pushed it much and it also is not a huge employer. It has 3 if you strech the definition.
- littlestymaar 5y ago
  > It also has 3 for machine learning. Python was popular way before machine learning went mainstream. > 1 is the most important. 1. is super important, but keep in mind that Python having a much higher barrier to entry than PHP on the web didn't stop it from becoming popular in that field. Also 1. is really context dependent, and even if Rust has a bigger barrier to entry than Python, it has a much smaller one that its direct competitors (C and C++) because of its documentation, learning material, compiler error messages and dependency management. Regarding 2. you must have missed the news: Rust is now officially pushed by Microsoft, AWS, Google and Facebook. In fact you'd have difficulties to find languages with stronger corporate backing than Rust today apart from C# and Java.
  - rapsey 5y ago
    It's never winner takes all. There is space enough for a whole lot of languages. Keep in mind in the early days of Python it was pushed by Google. They specifically looked and advertised for python developers. That is more of a push than any company ever did for Rust. Rust barrier to entry compared to C/C++ is debatable. Lots of universities for instance have courses in them. They have a whole lot of books and a large community out there. I disagree about 2 and Rust. Those companies have projects in them and they are a part of rust foundation. They are however not mass employing Rust developers and only AWS has components for core stuff in Rust. Of course it is debatable for what is a core component.
    - littlestymaar 5y ago
      > Keep in mind in the early days of Python it was pushed by Google. You know Python is older than Google by several years right? ;) When this happened, Python was older than Rust today. > That is more of a push than any company ever did for Rust. Microsoft recently made Rust a officially language for developing Windows Native apps[1] and they've advertised the use of the language quite a bit during the past year. Google just released its new operating system developed with as much Rust as C and C++ combined[2]. Also, Facebook and AWS have hired members of the Rust development team after Mozilla's layoff last year to continue their work on Rust. [1]: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2021/05/06/announcing-rust-for-windows-v0-9/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2021/05/06/announ... [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27274820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27274820