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Rewriting in Rust is not a meme, it's a cycle. Before Rust became viable, rewrites were done in Go. From the archives: - Rewriting a large production system

• pjmlp 4y ago
  Which is why old timers eventually learn to just deliver with boring technology.
  • riskable 4y ago
    > Which is why old timers eventually learn to just deliver with ~~boring~~ buggy technology. There's a reason why folks take the time to rewrite things in Rust. No matter how good you are at C/C++ you will encounter bugs that you would not have if you had written it in Rust.
    • pjmlp 4y ago
      Assuming there is even a Rust library replacement to start with. People keep forgetting C++ has 30 years of being deployed in production. Rust is 2022 is like using C++ in 1990's in terms of ecosystem.
      • howinteresting 4y ago
        This is just plain false. C++ in the 1990s had nothing like serde for example.
        • jerf 4y ago
          The minimum bar for a language has moved up significantly since the 1990s. It isn't enough to just have a neat new idea, you need to ship with nearly-best-of-breed JSON serialization, a web server, a huge standard library with not just strings but things like compression and a lot of networking, and a laundry list of other things (give or take a few things) just to make it to the "barely viable alternate choice" point. Nice as a language consumer, but a bummer that building new languages and getting some attention is so much harder than it used to be.
          • xani__ 4y ago
          • marcosdumay 4y ago
            Well, Rust checks all of those boxes. Yes, it's a problem for that language you plan on creating (try specializing into a niche). But it's not something that should impact Rust's adoption.
            • pjmlp 4y ago
              With various levels of completeness.
        • rastignack 4y ago
          Where are the production grade and pure rust tls library ? Key-value store ? Ldap client ? SSH client ?
          • jhgg 4y ago
            > production grade and pure rust tls library You mean rustls? https://github.com/rustls/rustls https://github.com/rustls/rustls
            • rastignack 4y ago
              Pure rust ? No.
      • darksaints 4y ago
        The C++ IDEs available up until about 10 years ago were complete garbage. C++ still doesn't even have a good package manager. All the build systems are pure chaos. The largest C++ package manager has 1500 packages. In comparison, rust's package manager and build system are way easier to use and already have 94,000 packages available to users. That's not exactly fair to C++ because entire categories of dev tools (like build systems, package managers, IDEs, debuggers, version control, static analyzers, etc.) have matured after C++ did. And let's not forget that when C++ was new, most libraries were proprietary licensed and paid for, whereas today almost all libs are open source. And those improvements (along with general size of the programming community) mean that a trendy language today is going to develop and mature a lot faster than a formerly trendy language did 30 years ago. IMO Rust in 2022 is a lot closer to java in 2005 than C++ in the 1990s.
        • pjmlp 4y ago
          Another one that never used Borland, Apple, IBM IDEs. Where is the Rust IDE that is half as capable as C++ Builder, MPW/Metrowerks, Visual Age, Zortech? Considering all features they offered across the board in the box, not only code completion.
          • darksaints 4y ago
            I've used Borland. I'm sure it was marvelous at the time, but it doesn't hold a candle to CLion or Visual Studio in the 2010s or later.
            • pjmlp 4y ago
              CLion now ships a cross platform C++ framework with it? As for Visual Studio, yeah it is great in all aspects, except having nothing else beyond MFC to offer on the GUI department, WinUI is still a mess after UWP. In any case your examples are for C++ IDEs, reinforcing my case of C++ tooling versus Rust.
  • nicoburns 4y ago
    I honestly feel like rust is boring technology in most senses of the word. It “just works” more than almost any other technology that I’ve used. The ownership system is new and different, but that’s really the only thing.
    • xani__ 4y ago
    • notriddle 4y ago
      Rust is not boring technology. There's too much ecosystem churn, and new language features are deployed too often. C++ isn't boring technology, either. If you just want to deliver value, I'd recommend Java.
      • zozbot234 4y ago
        > There's too much ecosystem churn, and new language features are deployed too often. Not much of an issue if you stick to the stable subset of the language, and libraries that work within that subset.
      • lijogdfljk 4y ago
        > There's too much ecosystem churn, and new language features are deployed too often. That kinda feels like saying Linux is too crazy because new apps get made for Linux frequently. You can use the same part of the language tomorrow that you used today. Nothing is changing out from under you. If you're afraid of libraries, don't use them. You'd have the same problem in any ecosystem that is new, no?
        • notriddle 4y ago
          > That kinda feels like saying Linux is too crazy because new apps get made for Linux frequently. Apps are okay, but other parts of userland that roll out breaking changes on a regular basis are definitely a problem [1] [2] [3]. Even if they aren't technically part of the kernel, they are usually used with it to provide a complete working system, and they break stuff all the time. [1]: https://lwn.net/Articles/904892/ https://lwn.net/Articles/904892/ [2]: https://lwn.net/Articles/840430/ https://lwn.net/Articles/840430/ [3]: https://lwn.net/Articles/777595/ https://lwn.net/Articles/777595/
• avgcorrection 4y ago
  The stable release of Go was maybe four years or so before Rust. So what you’re saying seems to be that people like to rewrite their tech in young and hyped (for good or bad or neutral) languages. Because there is little connection between Rust and Go (other than chronology).
  • sbdivuvu 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
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