4 ms·

I'm going for C, because I am experienced with C and despite it being more tedious, with having to do everything yourself, I stick with it because the compile t

I'm going for C, because I am experienced with C and despite it being more tedious, with having to do everything yourself, I stick with it because the compile times, and in fact the compile process, are so much faster and simpler. I really enjoy the direct feedback I can get. I considered C++ but that too had terrible compile times. Ideally a debug build should simply not take longer than 100ms for a codebase that isn't even 5KLoc, and only C seems to be able to offer that experience.

gefhfffh 5y ago
I get that the compile process is faster, but simpler? In my experience, the compile process usually consists of "cargo build" A advantage of Rust is that usually you spend way less time debugging, because the compiler prevents many mistakes from compiling in the first place.
- bruce343434 5y ago
  I have an IDE with clang-lint and I find that it can spot pretty much every mistake. It can even detect some lifetime issues. Other than that my programming style is very much pass-by-value, trust the compiler to inline it, so the typical memory safety issues are simply not relevant to me.
  - pornel 5y ago
    Pass-by-value and let LLVM clean it up is also the idiomatic Rust way. rust-analyzer is pretty good for IDE integration, and it will catch way more than clang-lint (global lifetime analysis with guaranteed correctness, not just best-affort local, and thread safety/data races). Regarding compile times, Rust has a different approach. Instead of a fast cycle of run and see if it broke, it's more of following compiler nags until the program is correct and runs on the first try. Incremental (cached) compile times aren't too bad these days.
  - gefhfffh 5y ago
    Before I tried Rust (I got sick of it and the slow progress of Herb Sutter's research), I have used CLion with clang-tidy and had plenty of memory issues going undetected. Needless to say I didn't restrict myself to pass-by-value (compatible -> structs with ptrs are problematic as well) style, which seems quite restrictive
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      With current ISO C++ velocity and the stance to keep doing language evolution in person meetings, I don't think Herb's proposals will ever come to be, and even if they do, it won't matter when they most likely can only make it post-ISO C++26 with best efforts.
flyinglizard 5y ago
Why does it matter if compile time is 100ms or 300ms? At even a second, that’s going to be so negligible in the context of code-compile-debug work. Especially if something like a flash download is involved.
- bruce343434 5y ago
  0. it is a noticeable delay and impinges my momentum 1. A flash download is not involved 2. I hardly debug. I seem to be in a minority here, but my linter really does catch pretty much everything. I don't blindly write code, I always ponder my approach first. So basically, the compile times pull me out of the flow.
  - zh3 5y ago
    Very much with you on this one. Even with 50k+ LoC a 'make clean;make' takes less than a second (with help from ccache and a RAM disk). It effectively gets the compiler out of the way and keeps the thought processes continuous. One trick I like is to have a 2nd terminal watching the file(s) I'm editing, triggering a make/run on each save; building and running is then a single keypress away:- while [ 1 ]; do inotifywait -e move_self foo.c cc foo.c -o foo && ./foo # or 'make && ./foo' done
- OJFord 5y ago
  Are your rust builds really that fast? Wth am I doing wrong! I'd love to measure it in seconds.
  - jamincan 5y ago
    It's slow for me, but I'm not working on a very powerful machine. That said, cargo check is fast, and my general experience with Rust is that it generally works once it compiles. People getting into more advanced features might have different experiences.
- flohofwoe 5y ago
  The compilation time difference between C and Rust for nontrivial projects is much bigger than 3x.
dureuill 5y ago
You could get productive in Rust in 3 months max, and then the productivity gains would quickly outweigh the initial investment
- donkarma 5y ago
  Rust code takes longer to write than C code
  - dureuill 5y ago
    My experience is mainly with C++, but from my own evaluation I'm x2 to x3 more productive overall in Rust than in C++. The reasons are a simpler build system that makes using the ecosystem faster, more expressive type system (iterators with combinators, sum types), the safety part that allows to not accidentally introduce UB and to not waste time with static and runtime analysis, shortening debug and review time. This compounds over time to give a better maintenance time. I don't have a similar evaluation for C <-> Rust, but I suspect the result would be even more skewed in Rust's favor: sure, you might be writing individual lines faster in C, but the lack of iterators, generics, traits and RAII, and the relative difficulty to use dependencies means that you will waste a lot of time reinventing the wheel, often suboptimally.
  - drran 5y ago
    Total time of «coding + debugging» (development time) is shorter for safe Rust, because Rust eliminates few classes of errors. Unsafe Rust and C are same, but Rust have better abstractions (match operator, Rust enum's, typed macros, etc.)
  - pornel 5y ago
    It does for a novice. But once you learn Rust, it's actually quite productive. Rust has proper collections, strings, iterators, automatic (but not GC) memory management, error propagation, etc. This eliminates a lot of busywork, and makes Rust "denser", so you write less code, but get more done.
    - hyperman1 5y ago
CyberRabbi 5y ago
I’m going for C because programming language choice is a matter of personal preference in essence and Rust annoys me.
- sgt 5y ago
  How does it annoy you? Development velocity, creativity hinderance?
  - CyberRabbi 5y ago
    Visually it’s annoying. It’s like the comic sans of programming languages.
    - sgt 5y ago
      I used to code Perl in the late 90s. To me it doesn't look /that/ bad.
      - CyberRabbi 5y ago
        If rust is comic sans then Perl is wingdings, so yes, it could be worse.
        sgt 5y ago
        Hilarious

gefhfffh 5y ago

I get that the compile process is faster, but simpler? In my experience, the compile process usually consists of "cargo build" A advantage of Rust is that usually you spend way less time debugging, because the compiler prevents many mistakes from compiling in the first place.

bruce343434 5y ago
I have an IDE with clang-lint and I find that it can spot pretty much every mistake. It can even detect some lifetime issues. Other than that my programming style is very much pass-by-value, trust the compiler to inline it, so the typical memory safety issues are simply not relevant to me.
- pornel 5y ago
  Pass-by-value and let LLVM clean it up is also the idiomatic Rust way. rust-analyzer is pretty good for IDE integration, and it will catch way more than clang-lint (global lifetime analysis with guaranteed correctness, not just best-affort local, and thread safety/data races). Regarding compile times, Rust has a different approach. Instead of a fast cycle of run and see if it broke, it's more of following compiler nags until the program is correct and runs on the first try. Incremental (cached) compile times aren't too bad these days.
- gefhfffh 5y ago
  Before I tried Rust (I got sick of it and the slow progress of Herb Sutter's research), I have used CLion with clang-tidy and had plenty of memory issues going undetected. Needless to say I didn't restrict myself to pass-by-value (compatible -> structs with ptrs are problematic as well) style, which seems quite restrictive
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    With current ISO C++ velocity and the stance to keep doing language evolution in person meetings, I don't think Herb's proposals will ever come to be, and even if they do, it won't matter when they most likely can only make it post-ISO C++26 with best efforts.

flyinglizard 5y ago

Why does it matter if compile time is 100ms or 300ms? At even a second, that’s going to be so negligible in the context of code-compile-debug work. Especially if something like a flash download is involved.

bruce343434 5y ago
0. it is a noticeable delay and impinges my momentum 1. A flash download is not involved 2. I hardly debug. I seem to be in a minority here, but my linter really does catch pretty much everything. I don't blindly write code, I always ponder my approach first. So basically, the compile times pull me out of the flow.
- zh3 5y ago
  Very much with you on this one. Even with 50k+ LoC a 'make clean;make' takes less than a second (with help from ccache and a RAM disk). It effectively gets the compiler out of the way and keeps the thought processes continuous. One trick I like is to have a 2nd terminal watching the file(s) I'm editing, triggering a make/run on each save; building and running is then a single keypress away:- while [ 1 ]; do inotifywait -e move_self foo.c cc foo.c -o foo && ./foo # or 'make && ./foo' done
OJFord 5y ago
Are your rust builds really that fast? Wth am I doing wrong! I'd love to measure it in seconds.
- jamincan 5y ago
  It's slow for me, but I'm not working on a very powerful machine. That said, cargo check is fast, and my general experience with Rust is that it generally works once it compiles. People getting into more advanced features might have different experiences.
flohofwoe 5y ago
The compilation time difference between C and Rust for nontrivial projects is much bigger than 3x.

dureuill 5y ago

You could get productive in Rust in 3 months max, and then the productivity gains would quickly outweigh the initial investment

donkarma 5y ago
Rust code takes longer to write than C code
- dureuill 5y ago
  My experience is mainly with C++, but from my own evaluation I'm x2 to x3 more productive overall in Rust than in C++. The reasons are a simpler build system that makes using the ecosystem faster, more expressive type system (iterators with combinators, sum types), the safety part that allows to not accidentally introduce UB and to not waste time with static and runtime analysis, shortening debug and review time. This compounds over time to give a better maintenance time. I don't have a similar evaluation for C <-> Rust, but I suspect the result would be even more skewed in Rust's favor: sure, you might be writing individual lines faster in C, but the lack of iterators, generics, traits and RAII, and the relative difficulty to use dependencies means that you will waste a lot of time reinventing the wheel, often suboptimally.
- drran 5y ago
  Total time of «coding + debugging» (development time) is shorter for safe Rust, because Rust eliminates few classes of errors. Unsafe Rust and C are same, but Rust have better abstractions (match operator, Rust enum's, typed macros, etc.)
- pornel 5y ago
  It does for a novice. But once you learn Rust, it's actually quite productive. Rust has proper collections, strings, iterators, automatic (but not GC) memory management, error propagation, etc. This eliminates a lot of busywork, and makes Rust "denser", so you write less code, but get more done.
  - hyperman1 5y ago

CyberRabbi 5y ago

I’m going for C because programming language choice is a matter of personal preference in essence and Rust annoys me.

sgt 5y ago
How does it annoy you? Development velocity, creativity hinderance?
- CyberRabbi 5y ago
  Visually it’s annoying. It’s like the comic sans of programming languages.
  - sgt 5y ago
    I used to code Perl in the late 90s. To me it doesn't look /that/ bad.
    - CyberRabbi 5y ago
      If rust is comic sans then Perl is wingdings, so yes, it could be worse.
      - sgt 5y ago
        Hilarious