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I'm curious about this as someone who is interested in making DIY smart home products as well as their recently announced Zigbee radio module. But genuine ques

by eklbt 5y ago

I'm curious about this as someone who is interested in making DIY smart home products as well as their recently announced Zigbee radio module. But genuine question, is Rust ever going to catch on in the mainstream? It seems to have a bunch of nice to have features and great optimization. But the pick up, from what I've seen, has been less than stellar.

trevyn 5y ago
Are there specific areas where you would expect to see greater adoption at this point on the curve? "Mainstream" adoption of a brand-new language takes time, and it's still early on the curve for Rust. If anything, the hype-train might make it seem like it's a more mature ecosystem than it really is. The questions to ask are, what's causing the hype, and does the product deliver.
RuiJCS 5y ago
From what I've seen in my company there seems to be some resistance to rust due to it already having a lot of code written in other languages and them kinda of being the default go to choice.
bitdivision 5y ago
In what space? If you're talking about embedded, it's going to be pretty slow for industry to start using rust en masse. There's a huge amount of inertia in embedded, and the developers are somewhat beholden to manufacturers to release tooling around rust. In the software space, rust is being used by quite a few companies [0]. 0: https://www.rust-lang.org/production/users https://www.rust-lang.org/production/users
- davidhyde 5y ago
  It may be true that manufacturers are ignoring Rust but that certainly does not stop or hinder me. Tools like svd2rust mean I only need to rely on the accuracy of their svd files (industry standard register maps) - see https://github.com/rust-embedded/svd2rust https://github.com/rust-embedded/svd2rust Additionally, I use vanilla VS Code and rust analyser so no need to use manufacturer supplied lock-in IDEs. There are many compiler targets to choose from for cross compilation and tools like probe-run to flash chips. One major issue is lack of manufacturer provided code examples written in Rust. For that I rely on the Rust community. A typical example being nrf-hal for Nordic Bluetooth chips.
- tlamponi 5y ago
  FWIW, the Rust embedded size also lists a few production embedded users: https://www.rust-lang.org/what/embedded https://www.rust-lang.org/what/embedded
chewmieser 5y ago
Rust is gaining momentum at a decent pace IMO. It's not necessarily a web technology so expect slower adoption but still it's been steadily growing.
- allochthon 5y ago
  > It's not necessarily a web technology And honestly, I've been toying around with an Actix web server written in Rust, and the experience is not bad. As someone new to Rust, the main pain points have been along the lines of figuring out how to type a parameter to accept both a database pool and a database transaction (which turns out to be quite hard to figure out). Other than that kind of friction, the experience has been nice.
- _xyub 5y ago
  Yeah, I personally feel Rust is the future for web. The community just needs to invest in itself to build a bigger ecosystem. The rest will follow. If you want to try out rust for web, check out this project: https://github/wulf/create-rust-app https://github/wulf/create-rust-app
nicoburns 5y ago
> But genuine question, is Rust ever going to catch on in the mainstream? It seems to have a bunch of nice to have features and great optimization. But the pick up, from what I've seen, has been less than stellar. I'm not sure where you've gotten that impression. Rust is mainstream at this point. All the big companies (e.g. FAAMG) are using Rust. Lots of large products are: Firefox of course, but also, parts of AWS, npm, VS Code, Android. And even key infrastructure products like Linux are looking at integrating it.
- eklbt 5y ago
  I understand that it is very popular and is increasing adoption. But I was more targeting the embedded systems/hardware. Obviously this blog post is a step in that direction, but I'm still curious if hardware manufacturers will want to spend time adopting it.
  - follower 5y ago
    > I'm still curious if hardware manufacturers will want to spend time adopting it. The interesting thing I'm observing[0] is that embedded developers aren't wasting any time waiting for hardware manufacturers to do anything about Rust because they know manufacturers...well, let's express it as: "just don't care about software". Bluntly, regardless of whether it's perfect or not, Rust is currently pretty much the only hope for devs who are desperate to move on from C for embedded work and if they have reverse engineer every last proprietary bitstream, protocol & application they will. It's not just about the language itself (which depending on one's perspective has both pluses & minuses) but also the ecosystem/tooling (e.g. libraries with `no_std` support, build/test/doc systems, etc). (And, from my perspective, the community from which this has all grown--and why.) Maybe it won't succeed but it won't be for lack of trying. :D Also, one of the interesting aspects of Rust for me is how broad the domains of application are--using the same language from microcontroller level, through UEFI/firmware, OS, applications, & web is pretty appealing and leads to easier migration between domains. [0] Including in a comment a few comments down from this one (when I first read it): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29001985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29001985
- 5y ago
po1nt 5y ago
I think many people are trying to make Rust real deal and some of them make really good job. There was a guy who develops Linux ABI compatible kernel in rust, Tor is being rewritten in to Rust and some of the projects are just amazing. I believe it will catch on as soon as people realize it's a C performance with modern syntax and memory safety mitigating most of the security flaws and bugs introduced by mismanaged memory. I fell in love as soon as I saw descriptive scalar types like "i32".
tlamponi 5y ago
@work we do most of our new development in rust and did so since 2019, its quite a lot more than stellar than most other things we work(ed) with, and we had some interpreted dynamic and some compiled C stuff, its an improvement from either direction.. While at work I'm doing more software development I originally studied comp. eng. and dabbled around quite a bit with embedded systems, mainly in C, ASM and tinyOS with its nesC dialect+framework. Rust is a god send in lots of areas there too, you can establish zero-cost (well some compile cost, but zero runtime ones) contracts and static guarantees with the type systems, like disallowing that code that would produce a register pull up/down configuration with a short-circuit from happening, or shared access to resources can also be done in such ways. Check the respective chapter of the rust embedded book for more info: https://docs.rust-embedded.org/book/static-guarantees/index.html https://docs.rust-embedded.org/book/static-guarantees/index....

by eklbt 5y ago

trevyn 5y ago

Are there specific areas where you would expect to see greater adoption at this point on the curve? "Mainstream" adoption of a brand-new language takes time, and it's still early on the curve for Rust. If anything, the hype-train might make it seem like it's a more mature ecosystem than it really is. The questions to ask are, what's causing the hype, and does the product deliver.

RuiJCS 5y ago

From what I've seen in my company there seems to be some resistance to rust due to it already having a lot of code written in other languages and them kinda of being the default go to choice.

bitdivision 5y ago

In what space? If you're talking about embedded, it's going to be pretty slow for industry to start using rust en masse. There's a huge amount of inertia in embedded, and the developers are somewhat beholden to manufacturers to release tooling around rust. In the software space, rust is being used by quite a few companies [0]. 0: https://www.rust-lang.org/production/users https://www.rust-lang.org/production/users

davidhyde 5y ago
It may be true that manufacturers are ignoring Rust but that certainly does not stop or hinder me. Tools like svd2rust mean I only need to rely on the accuracy of their svd files (industry standard register maps) - see https://github.com/rust-embedded/svd2rust https://github.com/rust-embedded/svd2rust Additionally, I use vanilla VS Code and rust analyser so no need to use manufacturer supplied lock-in IDEs. There are many compiler targets to choose from for cross compilation and tools like probe-run to flash chips. One major issue is lack of manufacturer provided code examples written in Rust. For that I rely on the Rust community. A typical example being nrf-hal for Nordic Bluetooth chips.
tlamponi 5y ago
FWIW, the Rust embedded size also lists a few production embedded users: https://www.rust-lang.org/what/embedded https://www.rust-lang.org/what/embedded

chewmieser 5y ago

Rust is gaining momentum at a decent pace IMO. It's not necessarily a web technology so expect slower adoption but still it's been steadily growing.

allochthon 5y ago
> It's not necessarily a web technology And honestly, I've been toying around with an Actix web server written in Rust, and the experience is not bad. As someone new to Rust, the main pain points have been along the lines of figuring out how to type a parameter to accept both a database pool and a database transaction (which turns out to be quite hard to figure out). Other than that kind of friction, the experience has been nice.
_xyub 5y ago
Yeah, I personally feel Rust is the future for web. The community just needs to invest in itself to build a bigger ecosystem. The rest will follow. If you want to try out rust for web, check out this project: https://github/wulf/create-rust-app https://github/wulf/create-rust-app

nicoburns 5y ago

> But genuine question, is Rust ever going to catch on in the mainstream? It seems to have a bunch of nice to have features and great optimization. But the pick up, from what I've seen, has been less than stellar. I'm not sure where you've gotten that impression. Rust is mainstream at this point. All the big companies (e.g. FAAMG) are using Rust. Lots of large products are: Firefox of course, but also, parts of AWS, npm, VS Code, Android. And even key infrastructure products like Linux are looking at integrating it.

eklbt 5y ago
I understand that it is very popular and is increasing adoption. But I was more targeting the embedded systems/hardware. Obviously this blog post is a step in that direction, but I'm still curious if hardware manufacturers will want to spend time adopting it.
- follower 5y ago
  > I'm still curious if hardware manufacturers will want to spend time adopting it. The interesting thing I'm observing[0] is that embedded developers aren't wasting any time waiting for hardware manufacturers to do anything about Rust because they know manufacturers...well, let's express it as: "just don't care about software". Bluntly, regardless of whether it's perfect or not, Rust is currently pretty much the only hope for devs who are desperate to move on from C for embedded work and if they have reverse engineer every last proprietary bitstream, protocol & application they will. It's not just about the language itself (which depending on one's perspective has both pluses & minuses) but also the ecosystem/tooling (e.g. libraries with `no_std` support, build/test/doc systems, etc). (And, from my perspective, the community from which this has all grown--and why.) Maybe it won't succeed but it won't be for lack of trying. :D Also, one of the interesting aspects of Rust for me is how broad the domains of application are--using the same language from microcontroller level, through UEFI/firmware, OS, applications, & web is pretty appealing and leads to easier migration between domains. [0] Including in a comment a few comments down from this one (when I first read it): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29001985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29001985
5y ago

po1nt 5y ago

I think many people are trying to make Rust real deal and some of them make really good job. There was a guy who develops Linux ABI compatible kernel in rust, Tor is being rewritten in to Rust and some of the projects are just amazing. I believe it will catch on as soon as people realize it's a C performance with modern syntax and memory safety mitigating most of the security flaws and bugs introduced by mismanaged memory. I fell in love as soon as I saw descriptive scalar types like "i32".

tlamponi 5y ago

@work we do most of our new development in rust and did so since 2019, its quite a lot more than stellar than most other things we work(ed) with, and we had some interpreted dynamic and some compiled C stuff, its an improvement from either direction.. While at work I'm doing more software development I originally studied comp. eng. and dabbled around quite a bit with embedded systems, mainly in C, ASM and tinyOS with its nesC dialect+framework. Rust is a god send in lots of areas there too, you can establish zero-cost (well some compile cost, but zero runtime ones) contracts and static guarantees with the type systems, like disallowing that code that would produce a register pull up/down configuration with a short-circuit from happening, or shared access to resources can also be done in such ways. Check the respective chapter of the rust embedded book for more info: https://docs.rust-embedded.org/book/static-guarantees/index.html https://docs.rust-embedded.org/book/static-guarantees/index....