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I'll admit that I like Rust, but this seems like an odd take to me. "Not distracting me with type errors" seems directly at odds with "safer overall", especiall

I'll admit that I like Rust, but this seems like an odd take to me. "Not distracting me with type errors" seems directly at odds with "safer overall", especially for a missile launching system. That sounds like a recipe for "Whoops, there goes New York, but at least the code looked nice".

amelius 5y ago
The catch here is that not all type errors are errors. I'm not arguing here against a typesystem, just against overly strict typesystems.
- chakkepolja 5y ago
  Rust typesystem has its place in many soft realtime / system programming domains. Problem is people trying to push it as one true solution. But that's a human problem.
- kazoomonger 5y ago
  I would interested in seeing an example of what sort of type errors you mean. IME, the Rust compiler does a great job of catching actual mistakes in the type system, such as with Send/Sync. It also pretty easily lets you tell the compiler "no, I know what I'm doing" and say "unsafe impl Send for Foo {}" to do it anyways.
  - amelius 5y ago
    I'm talking about the sort of type errors you get when you try to implement a doubly linked list in safe Rust. https://rust-unofficial.github.io/too-many-lists/ https://rust-unofficial.github.io/too-many-lists/
    - kazoomonger 5y ago
      IDK, I think this quote from your link sums up my attitude towards that: > Linked lists are as niche and vague of a data structure as a trie. Few would balk at me claiming a trie is a niche structure that your average programmer could happily never learn in an entire productive career -- and yet linked lists have some bizarre celebrity status. We teach every undergrad how to write a linked list. It's the only niche collection I couldn't kill from std::collections. It's the list in C++! > We should all as a community say no to linked lists as a "standard" data structure. It's a fine data structure with several great use cases, but those use cases are exceptional, not common. I have never in my professional career used or to my knowledge relied upon a singly-linked list, to say nothing of a doubly-linked list. That feels like picking something to be contrarian, not because it exemplifies a good case of where Rust is too strict. Just use a Vec? It's way more performant anyways.

amelius 5y ago

The catch here is that not all type errors are errors. I'm not arguing here against a typesystem, just against overly strict typesystems.

chakkepolja 5y ago
Rust typesystem has its place in many soft realtime / system programming domains. Problem is people trying to push it as one true solution. But that's a human problem.
kazoomonger 5y ago
I would interested in seeing an example of what sort of type errors you mean. IME, the Rust compiler does a great job of catching actual mistakes in the type system, such as with Send/Sync. It also pretty easily lets you tell the compiler "no, I know what I'm doing" and say "unsafe impl Send for Foo {}" to do it anyways.
- amelius 5y ago
  I'm talking about the sort of type errors you get when you try to implement a doubly linked list in safe Rust. https://rust-unofficial.github.io/too-many-lists/ https://rust-unofficial.github.io/too-many-lists/
  - kazoomonger 5y ago
    IDK, I think this quote from your link sums up my attitude towards that: > Linked lists are as niche and vague of a data structure as a trie. Few would balk at me claiming a trie is a niche structure that your average programmer could happily never learn in an entire productive career -- and yet linked lists have some bizarre celebrity status. We teach every undergrad how to write a linked list. It's the only niche collection I couldn't kill from std::collections. It's the list in C++! > We should all as a community say no to linked lists as a "standard" data structure. It's a fine data structure with several great use cases, but those use cases are exceptional, not common. I have never in my professional career used or to my knowledge relied upon a singly-linked list, to say nothing of a doubly-linked list. That feels like picking something to be contrarian, not because it exemplifies a good case of where Rust is too strict. Just use a Vec? It's way more performant anyways.