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I started picking up Rust a bit over two years ago, and it was HARD. I didn't have teammates who knew it to help me out, so I used community resources (/r/rust,

I started picking up Rust a bit over two years ago, and it was HARD. I didn't have teammates who knew it to help me out, so I used community resources (/r/rust, exercism.io, etc.) I'm still not great with the language, but I'd say I'm about as proficient in it as anything else. The progress is slow enough that you find many more opportunities to quit, but once you do become productive, I think the hard work really pays off. I've written before about some of my woes in taking a service to prod with mostly Python code. It was easy to write and get running, but then it had all sorts of errors that were basically impossible to detect until runtime. Kind of a nightmare to maintain. Transitioning it to Rust was a lot of work, but I've literally only had one error that I had to fix, which was caused by my faulty assumption about incoming data that I simply `.unwrap()`ped. I initially was interested in Rust for the promises of higher-performance, lower memory footprint compute, and that is a great aspect of it. But the correctness guarantees that I've experienced make all the hard work I went through absolutely worth it. Sure, it would be great if the learning curve was less steep. But that doesn't mean the hard work isn't worth it.

eternalban 4y ago
Rust and Python sit at almost extreme opposite ends of programming paradigms. The question on the table remains if the excessive complexity of the Rust language is factually worth the pain.
- crabbygrabby 4y ago
  If you need performance, compiled binaries, etc then yea it sure can be worth it. In some cases you don't have a product if you can't get the performance to reach a certain level. In other cases you spend a lot more money tracking bugs in production that rust just doesn't allow to happen in the first place. Every project has different priorities, some projects don't need rust at all, some greatly benefit from it. The complexity is worth it for me, even for hobby projects, mostly because after a few weeks of toiling with it, I learned it wasn't that complicated, and what it gives me in price of mind way surpasses that.
  - eternalban 4y ago
    You are basically asserting that performance & correctness are beyond the reach of developers who build systems in other languages. So based on this I suppose all systems developed in other languages are either performing subpar and/or are incorrect? "Is the pain worth it" is the question. My 42 years of professional development tells me the answer is no. (I lean towards programming pleasure and not pain). YMMV.
    - rascul 4y ago
      I think the idea is that performance and correctness are easier to achieve with rust. Once you get over the initial mountain of learning. The mountain is a different height for each person.
    - jjnoakes 4y ago
      I would say most systems are either slower or less correct, yes. The nice thing about being a developer is that these costs are mostly hidden from us. The business pays for more compute if you churn out slow code, and churning out bugs just increases your job security. Imagine if you had to pay for the performance loss or production bugs directly though...
      - fulafel 4y ago
        For the rare case where the small speedup is otherwise worth the lower producitivty of Rust, it can still be a worse choice because the you have a disadvantage in iteration speed to rework the code for a faster problem solving strategy / algorithm.
        jjnoakes 4y ago
        On the contrary, I find the speedup due to rust to be quite large and the productivity to be quite acceptable. Refactoring for me is so much easier when I can rely on the compiler to catch so much.
        pdimitar 4y ago
- dagmx 4y ago
  While that's true they sit at opposite ends, I find Rust is a really good compiled language to switch to for people used to Python. For a lot of cases, my rust code is very identical to my Python code when it comes to writing CLI tools or flask like web apps.
- dataangel 4y ago
  lol "excessive complexity". Compared to what? Every language if you learn it to sufficient depth starts to appear that way, and Rust is mostly displacing C++ which is insanely more complex.
- jen20 4y ago
  I’d agree they’re at opposite ends of the complexity spectrum: it’s very difficult to write a moderately complex python program which uses even a single dependency and is bug free, then deploy it to the machine of a non-technical user. Rust meanwhile excels at this task. Oh wait, that’s not what you meant?
  - rob74 4y ago
    In Python, "it’s very difficult to write a moderately complex program which uses even a single dependency and is bug free" - whereas in Rust, it's very difficult to write pretty much anything, but if you manage to do it, it has less bugs, (and being a single binary, is easier to install - but you don't need Rust for that)?
DeathArrow 4y ago
>I initially was interested in Rust for the promises of higher-performance, lower memory footprint compute, and that is a great aspect of it. But the correctness guarantees that I've experienced make all the hard work I went through absolutely worth it. I'd go with 1/3 less performance by using Java or C#. While having better productivity. If we are talking a web service, of course.

eternalban 4y ago

Rust and Python sit at almost extreme opposite ends of programming paradigms. The question on the table remains if the excessive complexity of the Rust language is factually worth the pain.

crabbygrabby 4y ago
If you need performance, compiled binaries, etc then yea it sure can be worth it. In some cases you don't have a product if you can't get the performance to reach a certain level. In other cases you spend a lot more money tracking bugs in production that rust just doesn't allow to happen in the first place. Every project has different priorities, some projects don't need rust at all, some greatly benefit from it. The complexity is worth it for me, even for hobby projects, mostly because after a few weeks of toiling with it, I learned it wasn't that complicated, and what it gives me in price of mind way surpasses that.
- eternalban 4y ago
  You are basically asserting that performance & correctness are beyond the reach of developers who build systems in other languages. So based on this I suppose all systems developed in other languages are either performing subpar and/or are incorrect? "Is the pain worth it" is the question. My 42 years of professional development tells me the answer is no. (I lean towards programming pleasure and not pain). YMMV.
  - rascul 4y ago
    I think the idea is that performance and correctness are easier to achieve with rust. Once you get over the initial mountain of learning. The mountain is a different height for each person.
  - jjnoakes 4y ago
    I would say most systems are either slower or less correct, yes. The nice thing about being a developer is that these costs are mostly hidden from us. The business pays for more compute if you churn out slow code, and churning out bugs just increases your job security. Imagine if you had to pay for the performance loss or production bugs directly though...
    - fulafel 4y ago
      For the rare case where the small speedup is otherwise worth the lower producitivty of Rust, it can still be a worse choice because the you have a disadvantage in iteration speed to rework the code for a faster problem solving strategy / algorithm.
      - jjnoakes 4y ago
        On the contrary, I find the speedup due to rust to be quite large and the productivity to be quite acceptable. Refactoring for me is so much easier when I can rely on the compiler to catch so much.
      - pdimitar 4y ago
dagmx 4y ago
While that's true they sit at opposite ends, I find Rust is a really good compiled language to switch to for people used to Python. For a lot of cases, my rust code is very identical to my Python code when it comes to writing CLI tools or flask like web apps.
dataangel 4y ago
lol "excessive complexity". Compared to what? Every language if you learn it to sufficient depth starts to appear that way, and Rust is mostly displacing C++ which is insanely more complex.
jen20 4y ago
I’d agree they’re at opposite ends of the complexity spectrum: it’s very difficult to write a moderately complex python program which uses even a single dependency and is bug free, then deploy it to the machine of a non-technical user. Rust meanwhile excels at this task. Oh wait, that’s not what you meant?
- rob74 4y ago
  In Python, "it’s very difficult to write a moderately complex program which uses even a single dependency and is bug free" - whereas in Rust, it's very difficult to write pretty much anything, but if you manage to do it, it has less bugs, (and being a single binary, is easier to install - but you don't need Rust for that)?

DeathArrow 4y ago

>I initially was interested in Rust for the promises of higher-performance, lower memory footprint compute, and that is a great aspect of it. But the correctness guarantees that I've experienced make all the hard work I went through absolutely worth it. I'd go with 1/3 less performance by using Java or C#. While having better productivity. If we are talking a web service, of course.