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But Rust is designed to write high-performance code. If you don't care about performace, you don't really need Rust. Swift or Go seem more readable and easier t

But Rust is designed to write high-performance code. If you don't care about performace, you don't really need Rust. Swift or Go seem more readable and easier to use.

astrange 4y ago
Making memory management obnoxious by not handling copying for you doesn't really encourage performance. It just encourages people to prematurely optimize things that don't matter.
howinteresting 4y ago
Swift is well-designed but is virtually non-existent outside of Apple platforms, so it doesn't have nearly the third-party ecosystem that Rust does. Go has the third-party ecosystem but is poorly designed and doesn't have basic language features like sum types. Rust is likely the best combination of thought-out design and ecosystem support that exists in a programming language today.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Rust is also pretty much focused on Linux workloads, mostly. Also the Apple ecosystem has plenty of third parties, including commercial libraries.
  - jeroenhd 4y ago
    Interestingly, Microsoft is also pushing Rust quite hard with special API packages, tutorials, and even some IDE integration. Windows tools are often closed source, though, so you'll probably never notice it if your favourite tool uses Rust or not.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      What IDE integration? VSCode plugins aren't done by Microsoft, finally they got a spot on MSDN docs as of last VSCode release. Currently there are no plans for proper VS tooling on par with C++ across all Windows development workloads. If you mean Rust/WinRT, the new toy from the folks that produced C++/WinRT, after they successfully managed to kill C++/CX and turn the UWP development experience back to the glory days of Visual C++ 6.0 with ATL 3.0 (apparently very dear to their hearts), then it isn't something I look forward to ever use, if C++/WinRT is any indication of their understanding about developer productivity. Or do you mean the Azure Sphere OS, with the whole security marketing sales pitch while have a C only SDK available, and only now evaluating if Rust is something they would support in addition to C. Working really hard? Doesn't look like it.
      - mwcampbell 4y ago
        > Rust/WinRT, the new toy First, it's now called Rust for Windows (or windows-rs), because the scope has expanded to include (fairly low-level) bindings for all the Win32 and COM APIs in the Windows SDK. I strongly object to calling it a toy just because it doesn't have certain RAD conveniences. I'm happily using that crate (though currently only the Win32/COM portion) in the native parts of a Windows app I'm working on [1]. Yes, I have to use a lot of unsafe when working with the Win32 and COM APIs, but I keep my unsafe blocks as small as possible, and try to do as much as possible using safe Rust abstractions like slices and the various string types. FWIW, windows-rs recently removed the bindings for the Windows.UI.Xaml namespace, on the grounds that they were nearly unusable, and because the in-box Windows.UI.Xaml is no longer Microsoft's recommendation for app developers. I think the latter policy is a mistake, because some of us actually want to produce something with a minimal memory footprint, using a GUI toolkit that's already in the working set on all Windows machines. But maybe someone can bring back Windows.UI.Xaml bindings in a separate crate. > they successfully managed to kill C++/CX IMO C++/CX was a mistake. It was an attempt to make C++ into something it was not. From what I've read [2], C++/CX spectacularly failed to uphold C++'s zero-overhead principle, and the code size of newer shell components in Windows 10+ suffered as a result. Yes, I felt some of the frustration of working with the current (or at least, mid-2020) tooling for C++/WinRT when I was mentoring an intern on the Windows accessibility team at Microsoft (which I left later that year). But I think the Windows developer platform team had to do what was right for runtime efficiency. Developers who value rapid development over runtime efficiency can still use C#. > the glory days of Visual C++ 6.0 with ATL 3.0 They were glorious, for code footprint. But like you, I wouldn't want to write new code using ATL (and on the Windows accessibility team at Microsoft, we avoided that as much as practical). Luckily, C++/WinRT is a big improvement over ATL, thanks to modern C++. It's just a step backward from C++/CX for some RAD conveniences that were really a better fit for a language like C#. And to bring it back to Rust, I think Rust's macro system allows for some powerful high-level tooling on top of the WinRT bindings. For example, I think we could have a macro-based DSL for succinctly declaring a tree of UI elements, and that syntax could be more integrated with the rest of the language than the markup/code dichotomy that was introduced with WPF. Such tooling could also avoid the trap of boilerplate-heavy code generation that's typical of the Visual Studio wizards, and be available to developers who don't use VS. [1]: The non-native part is using Electron. I'd love to write the whole thing in Rust, but Electron in general, and access to Chromium's full WebRTC stack in particular, is just too convenient. [2]: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220606-00/?p=106713 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220606-00/?p=10...
  - howinteresting 4y ago
    I'm not sure what you're talking about. Rust works great on Windows, unlike Go.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      Only if the only thing you care about are CLI applications, same applies to Go.
  - burntsushi 4y ago
    > Rust is also pretty much focused on Linux workloads, mostly. This is blatantly false. Stop spreading misinformation.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      Can you please prove me wrong with a nice set of COM components written in Rust? Or maybe a well know watchOS or iOS app. Proper production stuff, not proof of concept or WIP random GitHub repos.
      - mwcampbell 4y ago
        Isn't Cloudflare using BoringTun in their Warp app? Rust might not yet be a good choice for the whole app, but IMO it's great for cross-platform non-UI code.
        steveklabnik 4y ago
        Yes, they are.
      - zRedShift 4y ago
        >iOS https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/vj40qq/noumenal_my_3d_modeling_app_for_ios_written_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/vj40qq/noumenal_my_3d... Does this count? And we’re soon shipping Rust components to several hundred thousands of iOS (and Android, but it’s technically Linux) users at my day job, so there’s that. As for Windows, I wouldn’t know, that’s your speciality. But I’m pretty sure there is quite a sizable amount of VSCode users on Windows, all of whom are running a certain Rust utility written by the person you’re replying to.
        pjmlp 4y ago
        A headless library plugged into Electron, basically a CLI. I know pretty well to whom I have replied. Yes, Noumental does count.
      - burntsushi 4y ago
pjmlp 4y ago
Swift is pretty much about performance, as replacement for C, C++ and Objective-C in the Apple ecosystem, it is even on Apple's official sites. What Apple isn't willing to do is sacrifice productivity while achieving that goal.
lijogdfljk 4y ago
Okay, maybe (i disagree, but w/e) - but the point is for learning. You'd have a difficult time learning Rust with Go, hah.
Santosh83 4y ago
Maybe, but Rust is also targetting higher levels of the stack like Webassembly, so I wouldn't say Rust is only meant for maximum bare metal performance/safety. Lots of higher level applications are also now being written (or rewritten) in Rust, so a canonical "simple string" crate won't be amiss I feel.
- solar-ice 4y ago
  > Rust is also targetting higher levels of the stack like Webassembly The /reasonable/ Rust vision of Webassembly is "you write parts of your application in this when they need to be faster than javascript". You really shouldn't be writing your whole web application in Rust, frankly, there's no good reason to. (I write Rust for a living, and I reach for other languages the moment I'm trying to do Normal Web Stuff.) And if people are using wasm as a sandbox outside the browser, instead of a reasonable VM with all the garbage collection niceties, they're probably doing it wrong unless there is a reason to require developers to write low-level, performant code without a GC.

But Rust is designed to write high-performance code. If you don't care about performace, you don't really need Rust. Swift or Go seem more readable and easier to use.

astrange 4y ago

Making memory management obnoxious by not handling copying for you doesn't really encourage performance. It just encourages people to prematurely optimize things that don't matter.

howinteresting 4y ago

Swift is well-designed but is virtually non-existent outside of Apple platforms, so it doesn't have nearly the third-party ecosystem that Rust does. Go has the third-party ecosystem but is poorly designed and doesn't have basic language features like sum types. Rust is likely the best combination of thought-out design and ecosystem support that exists in a programming language today.

pjmlp 4y ago
Rust is also pretty much focused on Linux workloads, mostly. Also the Apple ecosystem has plenty of third parties, including commercial libraries.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  Interestingly, Microsoft is also pushing Rust quite hard with special API packages, tutorials, and even some IDE integration. Windows tools are often closed source, though, so you'll probably never notice it if your favourite tool uses Rust or not.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    What IDE integration? VSCode plugins aren't done by Microsoft, finally they got a spot on MSDN docs as of last VSCode release. Currently there are no plans for proper VS tooling on par with C++ across all Windows development workloads. If you mean Rust/WinRT, the new toy from the folks that produced C++/WinRT, after they successfully managed to kill C++/CX and turn the UWP development experience back to the glory days of Visual C++ 6.0 with ATL 3.0 (apparently very dear to their hearts), then it isn't something I look forward to ever use, if C++/WinRT is any indication of their understanding about developer productivity. Or do you mean the Azure Sphere OS, with the whole security marketing sales pitch while have a C only SDK available, and only now evaluating if Rust is something they would support in addition to C. Working really hard? Doesn't look like it.
    - mwcampbell 4y ago
      > Rust/WinRT, the new toy First, it's now called Rust for Windows (or windows-rs), because the scope has expanded to include (fairly low-level) bindings for all the Win32 and COM APIs in the Windows SDK. I strongly object to calling it a toy just because it doesn't have certain RAD conveniences. I'm happily using that crate (though currently only the Win32/COM portion) in the native parts of a Windows app I'm working on [1]. Yes, I have to use a lot of unsafe when working with the Win32 and COM APIs, but I keep my unsafe blocks as small as possible, and try to do as much as possible using safe Rust abstractions like slices and the various string types. FWIW, windows-rs recently removed the bindings for the Windows.UI.Xaml namespace, on the grounds that they were nearly unusable, and because the in-box Windows.UI.Xaml is no longer Microsoft's recommendation for app developers. I think the latter policy is a mistake, because some of us actually want to produce something with a minimal memory footprint, using a GUI toolkit that's already in the working set on all Windows machines. But maybe someone can bring back Windows.UI.Xaml bindings in a separate crate. > they successfully managed to kill C++/CX IMO C++/CX was a mistake. It was an attempt to make C++ into something it was not. From what I've read [2], C++/CX spectacularly failed to uphold C++'s zero-overhead principle, and the code size of newer shell components in Windows 10+ suffered as a result. Yes, I felt some of the frustration of working with the current (or at least, mid-2020) tooling for C++/WinRT when I was mentoring an intern on the Windows accessibility team at Microsoft (which I left later that year). But I think the Windows developer platform team had to do what was right for runtime efficiency. Developers who value rapid development over runtime efficiency can still use C#. > the glory days of Visual C++ 6.0 with ATL 3.0 They were glorious, for code footprint. But like you, I wouldn't want to write new code using ATL (and on the Windows accessibility team at Microsoft, we avoided that as much as practical). Luckily, C++/WinRT is a big improvement over ATL, thanks to modern C++. It's just a step backward from C++/CX for some RAD conveniences that were really a better fit for a language like C#. And to bring it back to Rust, I think Rust's macro system allows for some powerful high-level tooling on top of the WinRT bindings. For example, I think we could have a macro-based DSL for succinctly declaring a tree of UI elements, and that syntax could be more integrated with the rest of the language than the markup/code dichotomy that was introduced with WPF. Such tooling could also avoid the trap of boilerplate-heavy code generation that's typical of the Visual Studio wizards, and be available to developers who don't use VS. [1]: The non-native part is using Electron. I'd love to write the whole thing in Rust, but Electron in general, and access to Chromium's full WebRTC stack in particular, is just too convenient. [2]: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220606-00/?p=106713 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220606-00/?p=10...
- howinteresting 4y ago
  I'm not sure what you're talking about. Rust works great on Windows, unlike Go.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Only if the only thing you care about are CLI applications, same applies to Go.
- burntsushi 4y ago
  > Rust is also pretty much focused on Linux workloads, mostly. This is blatantly false. Stop spreading misinformation.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Can you please prove me wrong with a nice set of COM components written in Rust? Or maybe a well know watchOS or iOS app. Proper production stuff, not proof of concept or WIP random GitHub repos.
    - mwcampbell 4y ago
      Isn't Cloudflare using BoringTun in their Warp app? Rust might not yet be a good choice for the whole app, but IMO it's great for cross-platform non-UI code.
      - steveklabnik 4y ago
        Yes, they are.
    - zRedShift 4y ago
      >iOS https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/vj40qq/noumenal_my_3d_modeling_app_for_ios_written_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/vj40qq/noumenal_my_3d... Does this count? And we’re soon shipping Rust components to several hundred thousands of iOS (and Android, but it’s technically Linux) users at my day job, so there’s that. As for Windows, I wouldn’t know, that’s your speciality. But I’m pretty sure there is quite a sizable amount of VSCode users on Windows, all of whom are running a certain Rust utility written by the person you’re replying to.
      - pjmlp 4y ago
        A headless library plugged into Electron, basically a CLI. I know pretty well to whom I have replied. Yes, Noumental does count.
    - burntsushi 4y ago

pjmlp 4y ago

Swift is pretty much about performance, as replacement for C, C++ and Objective-C in the Apple ecosystem, it is even on Apple's official sites. What Apple isn't willing to do is sacrifice productivity while achieving that goal.

lijogdfljk 4y ago

Okay, maybe (i disagree, but w/e) - but the point is for learning. You'd have a difficult time learning Rust with Go, hah.

Santosh83 4y ago

Maybe, but Rust is also targetting higher levels of the stack like Webassembly, so I wouldn't say Rust is only meant for maximum bare metal performance/safety. Lots of higher level applications are also now being written (or rewritten) in Rust, so a canonical "simple string" crate won't be amiss I feel.

solar-ice 4y ago
> Rust is also targetting higher levels of the stack like Webassembly The /reasonable/ Rust vision of Webassembly is "you write parts of your application in this when they need to be faster than javascript". You really shouldn't be writing your whole web application in Rust, frankly, there's no good reason to. (I write Rust for a living, and I reach for other languages the moment I'm trying to do Normal Web Stuff.) And if people are using wasm as a sandbox outside the browser, instead of a reasonable VM with all the garbage collection niceties, they're probably doing it wrong unless there is a reason to require developers to write low-level, performant code without a GC.