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I say this as someone who has had a lot of criticism for Rust: Rust definitely borrows a lot from other languages, but Rust deserves praise precisely because it

I say this as someone who has had a lot of criticism for Rust: Rust definitely borrows a lot from other languages, but Rust deserves praise precisely because it curates the right features and composes them in the right way. There are way too many languages from the PLT space that add some neat type system innovation, but they fail on syntax or performance or tooling or etc. That's not particularly laudable IMO, but Rust has great tooling (cargo, rust-analyzer, rustfmt, rustup, etc), great performance, great safety, and a bunch of type system innovations (including its approach to memory management) which were probably picked from the PLT world. The individual features are neat, but Rust is much greater than the sum of those borrowed innovations. Choosing what features to use and which to omit is a much more valuable task than any individual innovation.

benreesman 4y ago
Credit where credit is due: Rust has done a far better job than most of free-riding on Haskell’s type class system and clang’s optimizer, but rust-analyzer is a dumpster fire next to clangd, that’s not an example I’d use.
- mustache_kimono 4y ago
  Um what? Maybe it's just that I don't understand what clangd provides that's so great, but rust-analyzer, despite a few hiccups I've had with it, seems completely amazing at what it does.
  - benreesman 4y ago
    Well we could start with the fact that it crashes process IDs more often than Justin Bieber crashes Maseratis: https://github.com/rust-lang/vscode-rust/issues/890 https://github.com/rust-lang/vscode-rust/issues/890 (it’s always LLVM’s fault, I know). Or move right along to the insane configuration hacks that are mandatory if you want anything upmarket of VSCode (who doesn’t need a little practice with their Emacs Lisp), or the N^2 whatever that happens when you point it at bindgen output. What clangd does is work.
    - coder543 4y ago
      You linked to an issue from over a year ago to support your case? And the solution in that issue was just "switch to the right extension"? That's hardly a compelling argument. By all appearances, that person’s environment was completely broken since they reported the other extension did nothing at all, and a broken environment isn’t really a reflection on the tool. I can set up a broken environment for any tool and then complain about it. The absence of a bunch of other people encountering the same issue in that thread indicates this was not some big issue with rust-analyzer. If I search for "Rust" in the VS Code Extension Marketplace, it shows the extension you linked to... but it is clearly marked as deprecated, and VS Code won't even let me install it. So, it’s even more of a non-issue today than it was a year ago. The actual rust-analyzer extension works fine for me. I think Go's tooling is slightly better in my experience, but both are far better than any experience I've had with C++ tooling.
    - mustache_kimono 4y ago
      > it crashes process IDs more often than Justin Bieber crashes Maseratis: https://github.com/rust-lang/vscode-rust/issues/890 https://github.com/rust-lang/vscode-rust/issues/890 So -- this guy used an extension (named Rust) with rust-analyzer, a configuration known to not work, it didn't work(!), and the extension author recommends he tries the extension made for rust-analyzer. Hardly a case for the ages. Guy uses unsupported config and things don't work? > What clangd does is work. Don't doubt it. I'm just saying -- I haven't had any problems with the rust-analyzer extension since it became the Rust default. But, yes, I had a few hiccups and crashes beforehand, no doubt. I just have to imagine it's both younger, and doing more/different things than clangd.
    - nindalf 4y ago
      The other comments have pointed out this was a simple misconfiguration that was easily fixed. What I take exception with is "it’s always LLVM’s fault, I know". If you're going to trash other people's hard work in such a glib manner, it behooves you to know the details of what you're talking about. Tell us, why would a language server that doesn't generate any code use LLVM?
    - benreesman 4y ago
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  I haven't used clangd since the early days, but rust-analyzer hasn't been anything other than reliable for me (which is pretty impressive considering how often Rust changes as a language and how new rust-analyzer is).
  - benreesman 4y ago
    I would respectfully submit that time spent pushing your toolchain from more than one direction confers many benefits, of which a realistic appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of the various tooling options is but one.
- lenkite 4y ago
  ".. but rust-analyzer is a dumpster fire next to clangd.." Sorry, but this is patently false and is just straight-up misinformation. rust-analyzer is an extraordinary piece of work with careful, well-thought out idiomatic software design, easy usage and relatively low productive defect count. Rust, the language, itself might be rather over-hyped here on HN - its most loved status will drop significantly with larger real-world adoption. However, the rust-analyzer project isn't overhyped and is a clean and elegant product of software engineering. I wish I was good enough to design and code language software like this.

benreesman 4y ago

Credit where credit is due: Rust has done a far better job than most of free-riding on Haskell’s type class system and clang’s optimizer, but rust-analyzer is a dumpster fire next to clangd, that’s not an example I’d use.

mustache_kimono 4y ago
Um what? Maybe it's just that I don't understand what clangd provides that's so great, but rust-analyzer, despite a few hiccups I've had with it, seems completely amazing at what it does.
- benreesman 4y ago
  Well we could start with the fact that it crashes process IDs more often than Justin Bieber crashes Maseratis: https://github.com/rust-lang/vscode-rust/issues/890 https://github.com/rust-lang/vscode-rust/issues/890 (it’s always LLVM’s fault, I know). Or move right along to the insane configuration hacks that are mandatory if you want anything upmarket of VSCode (who doesn’t need a little practice with their Emacs Lisp), or the N^2 whatever that happens when you point it at bindgen output. What clangd does is work.
  - coder543 4y ago
    You linked to an issue from over a year ago to support your case? And the solution in that issue was just "switch to the right extension"? That's hardly a compelling argument. By all appearances, that person’s environment was completely broken since they reported the other extension did nothing at all, and a broken environment isn’t really a reflection on the tool. I can set up a broken environment for any tool and then complain about it. The absence of a bunch of other people encountering the same issue in that thread indicates this was not some big issue with rust-analyzer. If I search for "Rust" in the VS Code Extension Marketplace, it shows the extension you linked to... but it is clearly marked as deprecated, and VS Code won't even let me install it. So, it’s even more of a non-issue today than it was a year ago. The actual rust-analyzer extension works fine for me. I think Go's tooling is slightly better in my experience, but both are far better than any experience I've had with C++ tooling.
  - mustache_kimono 4y ago
    > it crashes process IDs more often than Justin Bieber crashes Maseratis: https://github.com/rust-lang/vscode-rust/issues/890 https://github.com/rust-lang/vscode-rust/issues/890 So -- this guy used an extension (named Rust) with rust-analyzer, a configuration known to not work, it didn't work(!), and the extension author recommends he tries the extension made for rust-analyzer. Hardly a case for the ages. Guy uses unsupported config and things don't work? > What clangd does is work. Don't doubt it. I'm just saying -- I haven't had any problems with the rust-analyzer extension since it became the Rust default. But, yes, I had a few hiccups and crashes beforehand, no doubt. I just have to imagine it's both younger, and doing more/different things than clangd.
  - nindalf 4y ago
    The other comments have pointed out this was a simple misconfiguration that was easily fixed. What I take exception with is "it’s always LLVM’s fault, I know". If you're going to trash other people's hard work in such a glib manner, it behooves you to know the details of what you're talking about. Tell us, why would a language server that doesn't generate any code use LLVM?
  - benreesman 4y ago
throwaway894345 4y ago
I haven't used clangd since the early days, but rust-analyzer hasn't been anything other than reliable for me (which is pretty impressive considering how often Rust changes as a language and how new rust-analyzer is).
- benreesman 4y ago
  I would respectfully submit that time spent pushing your toolchain from more than one direction confers many benefits, of which a realistic appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of the various tooling options is but one.
lenkite 4y ago
".. but rust-analyzer is a dumpster fire next to clangd.." Sorry, but this is patently false and is just straight-up misinformation. rust-analyzer is an extraordinary piece of work with careful, well-thought out idiomatic software design, easy usage and relatively low productive defect count. Rust, the language, itself might be rather over-hyped here on HN - its most loved status will drop significantly with larger real-world adoption. However, the rust-analyzer project isn't overhyped and is a clean and elegant product of software engineering. I wish I was good enough to design and code language software like this.