5 ms·

Nah, you're really not. Most of the time, particularly if you're not writing libraries, Rust feels like a dialect of Python that wants to help you get things r

by jdub 5y ago

Nah, you're really not. Most of the time, particularly if you're not writing libraries, Rust feels like a dialect of Python that wants to help you get things right.

auggierose 5y ago
Well, 90% of what I am doing is writing libraries. I know how to get things right. Does Rust?
- ssokolow 5y ago
  Honestly, as a consumer of libraries, I much prefer when they're written in Rust (without gratuitous use of `unsafe`) compared to a language which doesn't make you think about these sorts of things as hard.
  - auggierose 5y ago
    For me, writing a program is mostly writing a bunch of libraries that I then put together. So I am consuming my libraries mostly myself. Therefore, for me it is important that both the library writing and the library using can be done efficiently. I assume that having a Rust library of something is a good thing. The question for me is: How easy and natural and quick is it to express a concept as a library in Rust?
    - eximius 5y ago
      There are roughly two levels to the discussion: 1. Do you like strong type systems? If so, Rust us great! If you really would e itching for some python or JS, it may bother you, even though the Rust type inference really makes it a non-issue. 2. Do you care about allocations? One could be cheeky and rephrase it as "do you care about performance", but caring about allocations is one of the more advanced optimization concerns and GCed languages can have great performance if you dont hit their pathological cases. But the thing about Rust is that you have as much control as possible to avoid allocating. Entire libraries can allocate nothing more than temporary stack variables, with their primary data being lifetime constrained references the user passes in. 2.5 if you dont care about allocations, then does `Rc<Foo>` bother you? There are very easy escape hatches when you _just don't care_ if that thing is shared and don't want to deal with lifetimes. But Rust _lets you choose_. To me, its a pleasure to use.
      - auggierose 5y ago
        I see type systems as a necessary evil. Obviously, I like to be able to distinguish a 32 bit integer from a 64 bit integer or a String. And being able to define interfaces is important. But I am not a fan of modelling all sorts of high-level issues as a type system, because that always comes at a prize: When it works, it is great, and otherwise it really really sucks. So yeah, Rc<Foo> and stuff like that would bother me, because most of the time, these things are rather peripheral to what I am implementing. I feel that, when performance is really really important, it is more important to be able to generate code on the fly, and I don't think Rust supports that. But I haven't tried out ownership in Rust. I will have to work with it for a while to see if it bothers me or not.
    - rackjack 5y ago
      Nobody can answer this question unless you tell us what kind of concepts and libraries you are writing. Sometimes Rust is handcuffs, sometimes it is guardrails, sometimes it is a rollercoaster track. It is impossible to tell without more information. You and the other guys are asserting things with basically no knowledge of the other's context.
      - auggierose 5y ago
        If you say that "Rust sometimes is guardrails, sometimes it is handcuffs, sometimes it is a rollercoaster", that is already a lot of information. That's exactly what I want to avoid when implementing a concept: I don't want to be dependent on how well the type system fits my concept, because I am dealing with all sorts of concepts.
        rackjack 5y ago
        Ok. Sometimes Rust fits good, sometimes it fits bad. If you don't want to deal with that, that's fine. I don't want to deal with memory leaks and stuff, so I use Rust instead of C/C++ when low-level, and I deal with the bad fits. I'd still recommend learning Rust though. I find the way (the clean ways, not the ugly ways like Weak/Cell/etc.) it forces you to structure your programs is a very useful pattern when dealing with unrigid code like in C or C++, since its performance is near those languages. Then when coding C/C++ you can just break out of that pattern when you need to (e.g. self-referential structs). BTW, what languages do you usually work with? I've been eyeing up Zig since it's nearly adjacent to C, but I'm waiting until stabilization.
        auggierose 5y ago
        I am working mostly in Swift these days, and some Metal C for GPU and GPGPU. If Swift and SwiftUI both also ran in the browser, that would meet my needs. I need to break out of that Apple silo though for an important project of mine, so I am looking for alternatives. I was looking at zig, too! It seems very promising, and comptime seems like a great idea. I am considering both Rust and Zig for generating libraries in WebAssembly. I think I will mostly go with TypeScript for my project, it seems undogmatic and highly productive, and Turbo Pascal was my second language after Quick Basic, so I like its origins :-)
- jdub 5y ago
  "I know how to get things right." Ah, you're one of those people. Sure. :-)

by jdub 5y ago

Nah, you're really not. Most of the time, particularly if you're not writing libraries, Rust feels like a dialect of Python that wants to help you get things right.

auggierose 5y ago

Well, 90% of what I am doing is writing libraries. I know how to get things right. Does Rust?

ssokolow 5y ago
Honestly, as a consumer of libraries, I much prefer when they're written in Rust (without gratuitous use of `unsafe`) compared to a language which doesn't make you think about these sorts of things as hard.
- auggierose 5y ago
  For me, writing a program is mostly writing a bunch of libraries that I then put together. So I am consuming my libraries mostly myself. Therefore, for me it is important that both the library writing and the library using can be done efficiently. I assume that having a Rust library of something is a good thing. The question for me is: How easy and natural and quick is it to express a concept as a library in Rust?
  - eximius 5y ago
    There are roughly two levels to the discussion: 1. Do you like strong type systems? If so, Rust us great! If you really would e itching for some python or JS, it may bother you, even though the Rust type inference really makes it a non-issue. 2. Do you care about allocations? One could be cheeky and rephrase it as "do you care about performance", but caring about allocations is one of the more advanced optimization concerns and GCed languages can have great performance if you dont hit their pathological cases. But the thing about Rust is that you have as much control as possible to avoid allocating. Entire libraries can allocate nothing more than temporary stack variables, with their primary data being lifetime constrained references the user passes in. 2.5 if you dont care about allocations, then does `Rc<Foo>` bother you? There are very easy escape hatches when you _just don't care_ if that thing is shared and don't want to deal with lifetimes. But Rust _lets you choose_. To me, its a pleasure to use.
    - auggierose 5y ago
      I see type systems as a necessary evil. Obviously, I like to be able to distinguish a 32 bit integer from a 64 bit integer or a String. And being able to define interfaces is important. But I am not a fan of modelling all sorts of high-level issues as a type system, because that always comes at a prize: When it works, it is great, and otherwise it really really sucks. So yeah, Rc<Foo> and stuff like that would bother me, because most of the time, these things are rather peripheral to what I am implementing. I feel that, when performance is really really important, it is more important to be able to generate code on the fly, and I don't think Rust supports that. But I haven't tried out ownership in Rust. I will have to work with it for a while to see if it bothers me or not.
  - rackjack 5y ago
    Nobody can answer this question unless you tell us what kind of concepts and libraries you are writing. Sometimes Rust is handcuffs, sometimes it is guardrails, sometimes it is a rollercoaster track. It is impossible to tell without more information. You and the other guys are asserting things with basically no knowledge of the other's context.
    - auggierose 5y ago
      If you say that "Rust sometimes is guardrails, sometimes it is handcuffs, sometimes it is a rollercoaster", that is already a lot of information. That's exactly what I want to avoid when implementing a concept: I don't want to be dependent on how well the type system fits my concept, because I am dealing with all sorts of concepts.
      - rackjack 5y ago
        Ok. Sometimes Rust fits good, sometimes it fits bad. If you don't want to deal with that, that's fine. I don't want to deal with memory leaks and stuff, so I use Rust instead of C/C++ when low-level, and I deal with the bad fits. I'd still recommend learning Rust though. I find the way (the clean ways, not the ugly ways like Weak/Cell/etc.) it forces you to structure your programs is a very useful pattern when dealing with unrigid code like in C or C++, since its performance is near those languages. Then when coding C/C++ you can just break out of that pattern when you need to (e.g. self-referential structs). BTW, what languages do you usually work with? I've been eyeing up Zig since it's nearly adjacent to C, but I'm waiting until stabilization.
        auggierose 5y ago
        I am working mostly in Swift these days, and some Metal C for GPU and GPGPU. If Swift and SwiftUI both also ran in the browser, that would meet my needs. I need to break out of that Apple silo though for an important project of mine, so I am looking for alternatives. I was looking at zig, too! It seems very promising, and comptime seems like a great idea. I am considering both Rust and Zig for generating libraries in WebAssembly. I think I will mostly go with TypeScript for my project, it seems undogmatic and highly productive, and Turbo Pascal was my second language after Quick Basic, so I like its origins :-)
jdub 5y ago
"I know how to get things right." Ah, you're one of those people. Sure. :-)