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I am under the impression that even _safe_ Rust is really hard to learn. Several years ago I started with GoLang and it was so easy to start programming even ad

I am under the impression that even _safe_ Rust is really hard to learn. Several years ago I started with GoLang and it was so easy to start programming even advanced things almost instantly..Rust drives me crazy. The syntax seems overcomplicated, the compiler errors are cryptic, the IDE is not helpful.

staticassertion 5y ago
Rust initially was much harder to learn. The compiler was considerably more strict - rejecting a lot of programs that were entirely valid. That earned rust a very negative "hard language" reputation early on. That hasn't been the case for years. The 2018 edition officially stabilized Non-Lexical Lifetimes, allowing tons of valid programs to work. There have been a lot of other improvements since then to address papercuts. At this point Rust is a pretty easy language to learn imo.
sidkshatriya 5y ago
> I am under the impression that even _safe_ Rust is really hard to learn. [...] > The syntax seems overcomplicated, the compiler errors are cryptic, the IDE is not helpful. Yes, Rust is hard to learn. Rust does _seem_ over-complicated. However I like to compare Rust to exercise. You need to do a bit of it before you start reaping the benefits of it. If you suspend your judgement for a bit and try to write some Rust, starting from the very beginning you will find that: - Rust is actually a small language at its core, unlike the monstrosity that is C++ . You don't really need Advanced Rust to be productive. Use Advanced Rust only when you're... advanced - Rust actually is very consistent - The Rust compiler is actually very helpful. It's the least cryptic compiler I've met. But its OK if you feel that now as you're just beginning your journey with Rust Avoid the temptation to "read" Rust from a book. Try to _do_ Rust. Otherwise it might overwhelm you. Simply keep adding Rust techniques to your arsenal as you mature in your usage of Rust. Learning Rust changed the way I look at programing. Rust is a beautiful language. As a random example, just look at the the Firecracker VMM written in Rust -- https://github.com/firecracker-microvm/firecracker https://github.com/firecracker-microvm/firecracker . It would have been able to very difficult for me to understand the codebase if it were written in C/C++! Rust is one of those rare languages I've encountered that if the code compiles, there is a high probability it will work. The type system is that good! TL;DR Persist and you will reap the rewards with Rust.
- FpUser 5y ago
  >"Avoid the temptation to "read" Rust from a book. Try to _do_ Rust. Otherwise it might overwhelm you. Simply keep adding Rust techniques to your arsenal as you mature in your usage of Rust." I used to be the opposite in the ancient times. Would read a book and then start programming. But then the books were relatively tiny. Now most languages has matured to the state of having an insane amount of features. And the result is definitely what you say. Just read some brief overview on basic language constructs and then proceed by learning on on-need basis as you progress. Among the others I program in C++ for example but I would shoot myself if asked to read something resembling its complete description. Sorry I have a life to live. And I am using only subset of C++ that solves my particular needs. If I feel my code does not look nice when doing some particular stuff then the time comes to do some more reading.
- Arch-TK 5y ago
  >It would have been able to very difficult for me to understand the codebase if it were written in C/C++! I find rust and modern C++ codebases equally hard to understand. How can you be so sure that the reason you find it easier to understand is not simply because you know rust better than C or C++?
- sAbakumoff 5y ago
  That is inspiring. Thanks a lot! Perhaps the problem was that I was overconfident and immediately started with pretty advanced Rust - writing a web assembly that performs big data analysis using the "polars" library.
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    I consider myself reasonably competent in Rust but the webassembly stuff always trips me up, and so do most cross-language tools. You might've just had an unfortunate experience. I'm not sure if I'd pick Rust for WASM unless you already know it, but I suppose it's a good reason to learn the language. The problem with Rust is that to write good Rust, you need to accept that you can't use the same approach to solve a problem you could use in other languages. The borrow checker and its implications aren't necessarily difficult, but they're different. I'd compare the experience to someone who started in Python learning Haskell for the first time: it can take weeks or more before one can truly understand a monad. If you start with basic functional programming you can be quite productive before you need such code structures, but when you open a code base where monads are mixed liberally, your head will be spinning. Rust may be a lot closer to traditional imperative languages, but the implications of the safety mechanisms in the language are something you can't just skip over. It'll take time and practice to write code that the Rust compiler likes. If you're getting started, I'd recommend writing some toy programs for the CLI instead. I also recommend using "clippy" to warn you of code smells (it'll suggest improvements when it can!) and to get links to specific problems you might not be aware of. As for the IDE, I recommend the rust-analyser plugin over the native "Rust" plugins found in most IDEs, because the basic ones fail to do proper macro expansion and leave you guessing on how to use libraries.
ccleve 5y ago
Why was this downvoted? Rust may be the "most loved" language, but after a few weeks with it, I don't love it. We've got to face the reality that it makes simple things way too complicated. In fairness, I have found the compiler errors to be extremely helpful. They often tell me exactly what to fix. But honestly, they shouldn't have to do that. The syntax should have been obvious from the beginning, as it is in most programming languages.
- spacechild1 5y ago
  I guess because it's off topic. TFA is about a specific Rust issue and a generic comment about "Rust is hard to learn" doesn't add anything to the conversation. It's like the generic "C++ is way to complicated" comment under every C++ post. They just incite language flame wars and district from the actually interesting stuff.
  - sAbakumoff 5y ago
    Right, the HN comments are all about being on topic.
  - staticassertion 5y ago
    It's because, for some reason, the rust community is extremely, overly aggressive about downvoting. I think we can all just admit that - I've been using Rust since 2014 and it's always been an issue and it needs to be called out.
    - jamincan 5y ago
      I haven't commented/been upvoted enough to be allowed to downvote, and it is honestly quite liberating and lets me focus on elevating what I think are positive contributions.
- creata 5y ago
  What syntax "should have been obvious from the beginning"? I always felt like most things in Rust are around as simple as they could be, for the things the language is trying to do.
eminence32 5y ago
I suspect you might start to receive a bunch of replies from people with the opposite experience (replies from people who find the syntax easy to read, and the compiler errors clear and understandable). I would like to attempt to preempt that by noting that it's totally reasonable for two people to feel drastically different things about a programming language. Neither view is more correct than the other. That said, I am curious why different people have these different feelings. One aspect is likely rooted in the fact all of our brains are different. But I also wonder if first impressions play a big role here. A good example of a cryptic rust error is the `expected type Foo, but found type Foo` error message which is very inscrutable, especially to a new users. There are also some lifetime errors that can be hard to understand. I wonder if someone encounters these type of messages very early on in their learning experiences, the unpleasantness of having to decipher them colors the rest of their learning experiences.
- kaashif 5y ago
  > A good example of a cryptic rust error is the `expected type Foo, but found type Foo` error message which is very inscrutable, especially to a new users. Does Rust actually give an error like `expected type Foo, but found type Foo`, as in both types are the same in the error? I don't think I've seen that before, but I don't write much Rust. If both types are the same, what does the error mean?
  - masonium 5y ago
    I've seen this error a lot when working with two different versions of the same library. Specifically, you can directly include version A, but a different library depends on a version B, with some of that exposed in the public API.
    - staticassertion 5y ago
      I think the compiler will now give you a hint that they may be from different versions. If not, next time you see it you should open up a bug in rustc. To anyone who gets a cryptic error message - that's a bug, report it.
Tozen 5y ago
I believe that different programming languages resonate better with some more than others. Often it's a matter of preferences, comfort, perceived usability, and previous experiences. So, it's quite possible for various people to feel more comfortable using Golang than Rust, and the opposite can be true as well, where using Rust is preferred over Golang. At the end of the day, it will usually come down to individual or corporate priorities. Another of the newer languages that fall into a similar usage space would be Vlang (https://github.com/vlang/v https://github.com/vlang/v). It being debatably easier to learn and use, in the context of languages that more easily interact with C.
scrubs 5y ago
Agree. I don't need to get 10 Phds figuring out Rust. At this point in my career distributed algos/systems are much more interesting to understand and implement. And writing those in a way that are bindable to multiple clients means staying close to C/Zig/C++. Over the years the following C++ aspects have and continue to drive me nuts. On a scale of (Sarcasm coming next) 10: * (7/10) build time, and dependency management with the 81 million tools, formats, approaches to deal with this. * (1/10) 21 page error sets resulting from single word typos in templated code: even Egyptologists ask how do we put up with that? At least we have nice rocks to look at. Yah, they have rocks. How come we don't have rocks? * (1/10) Code decl duplication between .h/.cpp * (1/10) Long, pointless C++ errors. if you have an orthodox background the guilt trip C++ lays on for mismatched function calls is legion; you really feel it. It tells you such-n-such function could not be matched ... but look at the 42 million function calls you could have made ... should have made ... and it's killing me you didn't make; you seeing the effort I'm putting into this? It's killing me ... I just need the cop to say it straight: you screwed up. Ticket. See in court. Have a nice day. I prefer one liners. I'm in no rush to waste time on Rust. I'd rather stick to GO where I can, Zig when I can. At the office we're 65% C++, 25% C. Stack overflows, memory corruptions do occur periodically; I've sorted several of those out. But the new code is C++ which makes heavy use of STL. Much better. There is growing adoption in GO and Rust, but the vast amount of C/C++ code means the apple will not fall too far from the tree.

staticassertion 5y ago

Rust initially was much harder to learn. The compiler was considerably more strict - rejecting a lot of programs that were entirely valid. That earned rust a very negative "hard language" reputation early on. That hasn't been the case for years. The 2018 edition officially stabilized Non-Lexical Lifetimes, allowing tons of valid programs to work. There have been a lot of other improvements since then to address papercuts. At this point Rust is a pretty easy language to learn imo.

sidkshatriya 5y ago

> I am under the impression that even _safe_ Rust is really hard to learn. [...] > The syntax seems overcomplicated, the compiler errors are cryptic, the IDE is not helpful. Yes, Rust is hard to learn. Rust does _seem_ over-complicated. However I like to compare Rust to exercise. You need to do a bit of it before you start reaping the benefits of it. If you suspend your judgement for a bit and try to write some Rust, starting from the very beginning you will find that: - Rust is actually a small language at its core, unlike the monstrosity that is C++ . You don't really need Advanced Rust to be productive. Use Advanced Rust only when you're... advanced - Rust actually is very consistent - The Rust compiler is actually very helpful. It's the least cryptic compiler I've met. But its OK if you feel that now as you're just beginning your journey with Rust Avoid the temptation to "read" Rust from a book. Try to _do_ Rust. Otherwise it might overwhelm you. Simply keep adding Rust techniques to your arsenal as you mature in your usage of Rust. Learning Rust changed the way I look at programing. Rust is a beautiful language. As a random example, just look at the the Firecracker VMM written in Rust -- https://github.com/firecracker-microvm/firecracker https://github.com/firecracker-microvm/firecracker . It would have been able to very difficult for me to understand the codebase if it were written in C/C++! Rust is one of those rare languages I've encountered that if the code compiles, there is a high probability it will work. The type system is that good! TL;DR Persist and you will reap the rewards with Rust.

FpUser 5y ago
>"Avoid the temptation to "read" Rust from a book. Try to _do_ Rust. Otherwise it might overwhelm you. Simply keep adding Rust techniques to your arsenal as you mature in your usage of Rust." I used to be the opposite in the ancient times. Would read a book and then start programming. But then the books were relatively tiny. Now most languages has matured to the state of having an insane amount of features. And the result is definitely what you say. Just read some brief overview on basic language constructs and then proceed by learning on on-need basis as you progress. Among the others I program in C++ for example but I would shoot myself if asked to read something resembling its complete description. Sorry I have a life to live. And I am using only subset of C++ that solves my particular needs. If I feel my code does not look nice when doing some particular stuff then the time comes to do some more reading.
Arch-TK 5y ago
>It would have been able to very difficult for me to understand the codebase if it were written in C/C++! I find rust and modern C++ codebases equally hard to understand. How can you be so sure that the reason you find it easier to understand is not simply because you know rust better than C or C++?
sAbakumoff 5y ago
That is inspiring. Thanks a lot! Perhaps the problem was that I was overconfident and immediately started with pretty advanced Rust - writing a web assembly that performs big data analysis using the "polars" library.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  I consider myself reasonably competent in Rust but the webassembly stuff always trips me up, and so do most cross-language tools. You might've just had an unfortunate experience. I'm not sure if I'd pick Rust for WASM unless you already know it, but I suppose it's a good reason to learn the language. The problem with Rust is that to write good Rust, you need to accept that you can't use the same approach to solve a problem you could use in other languages. The borrow checker and its implications aren't necessarily difficult, but they're different. I'd compare the experience to someone who started in Python learning Haskell for the first time: it can take weeks or more before one can truly understand a monad. If you start with basic functional programming you can be quite productive before you need such code structures, but when you open a code base where monads are mixed liberally, your head will be spinning. Rust may be a lot closer to traditional imperative languages, but the implications of the safety mechanisms in the language are something you can't just skip over. It'll take time and practice to write code that the Rust compiler likes. If you're getting started, I'd recommend writing some toy programs for the CLI instead. I also recommend using "clippy" to warn you of code smells (it'll suggest improvements when it can!) and to get links to specific problems you might not be aware of. As for the IDE, I recommend the rust-analyser plugin over the native "Rust" plugins found in most IDEs, because the basic ones fail to do proper macro expansion and leave you guessing on how to use libraries.

ccleve 5y ago

Why was this downvoted? Rust may be the "most loved" language, but after a few weeks with it, I don't love it. We've got to face the reality that it makes simple things way too complicated. In fairness, I have found the compiler errors to be extremely helpful. They often tell me exactly what to fix. But honestly, they shouldn't have to do that. The syntax should have been obvious from the beginning, as it is in most programming languages.

spacechild1 5y ago
I guess because it's off topic. TFA is about a specific Rust issue and a generic comment about "Rust is hard to learn" doesn't add anything to the conversation. It's like the generic "C++ is way to complicated" comment under every C++ post. They just incite language flame wars and district from the actually interesting stuff.
- sAbakumoff 5y ago
  Right, the HN comments are all about being on topic.
- staticassertion 5y ago
  It's because, for some reason, the rust community is extremely, overly aggressive about downvoting. I think we can all just admit that - I've been using Rust since 2014 and it's always been an issue and it needs to be called out.
  - jamincan 5y ago
    I haven't commented/been upvoted enough to be allowed to downvote, and it is honestly quite liberating and lets me focus on elevating what I think are positive contributions.
creata 5y ago
What syntax "should have been obvious from the beginning"? I always felt like most things in Rust are around as simple as they could be, for the things the language is trying to do.

eminence32 5y ago

I suspect you might start to receive a bunch of replies from people with the opposite experience (replies from people who find the syntax easy to read, and the compiler errors clear and understandable). I would like to attempt to preempt that by noting that it's totally reasonable for two people to feel drastically different things about a programming language. Neither view is more correct than the other. That said, I am curious why different people have these different feelings. One aspect is likely rooted in the fact all of our brains are different. But I also wonder if first impressions play a big role here. A good example of a cryptic rust error is the `expected type Foo, but found type Foo` error message which is very inscrutable, especially to a new users. There are also some lifetime errors that can be hard to understand. I wonder if someone encounters these type of messages very early on in their learning experiences, the unpleasantness of having to decipher them colors the rest of their learning experiences.

kaashif 5y ago
> A good example of a cryptic rust error is the `expected type Foo, but found type Foo` error message which is very inscrutable, especially to a new users. Does Rust actually give an error like `expected type Foo, but found type Foo`, as in both types are the same in the error? I don't think I've seen that before, but I don't write much Rust. If both types are the same, what does the error mean?
- masonium 5y ago
  I've seen this error a lot when working with two different versions of the same library. Specifically, you can directly include version A, but a different library depends on a version B, with some of that exposed in the public API.
  - staticassertion 5y ago
    I think the compiler will now give you a hint that they may be from different versions. If not, next time you see it you should open up a bug in rustc. To anyone who gets a cryptic error message - that's a bug, report it.

Tozen 5y ago

I believe that different programming languages resonate better with some more than others. Often it's a matter of preferences, comfort, perceived usability, and previous experiences. So, it's quite possible for various people to feel more comfortable using Golang than Rust, and the opposite can be true as well, where using Rust is preferred over Golang. At the end of the day, it will usually come down to individual or corporate priorities. Another of the newer languages that fall into a similar usage space would be Vlang (https://github.com/vlang/v https://github.com/vlang/v). It being debatably easier to learn and use, in the context of languages that more easily interact with C.

scrubs 5y ago

Agree. I don't need to get 10 Phds figuring out Rust. At this point in my career distributed algos/systems are much more interesting to understand and implement. And writing those in a way that are bindable to multiple clients means staying close to C/Zig/C++. Over the years the following C++ aspects have and continue to drive me nuts. On a scale of (Sarcasm coming next) 10: * (7/10) build time, and dependency management with the 81 million tools, formats, approaches to deal with this. * (1/10) 21 page error sets resulting from single word typos in templated code: even Egyptologists ask how do we put up with that? At least we have nice rocks to look at. Yah, they have rocks. How come we don't have rocks? * (1/10) Code decl duplication between .h/.cpp * (1/10) Long, pointless C++ errors. if you have an orthodox background the guilt trip C++ lays on for mismatched function calls is legion; you really feel it. It tells you such-n-such function could not be matched ... but look at the 42 million function calls you could have made ... should have made ... and it's killing me you didn't make; you seeing the effort I'm putting into this? It's killing me ... I just need the cop to say it straight: you screwed up. Ticket. See in court. Have a nice day. I prefer one liners. I'm in no rush to waste time on Rust. I'd rather stick to GO where I can, Zig when I can. At the office we're 65% C++, 25% C. Stack overflows, memory corruptions do occur periodically; I've sorted several of those out. But the new code is C++ which makes heavy use of STL. Much better. There is growing adoption in GO and Rust, but the vast amount of C/C++ code means the apple will not fall too far from the tree.