5 ms·

It's a fair remark, but your requirement is very niche. There's very few people who will value compilation time over runtime speed, safety, good abstractions, e

by gnull 4y ago

It's a fair remark, but your requirement is very niche. There's very few people who will value compilation time over runtime speed, safety, good abstractions, expressiveness.

pclmulqdq 4y ago
This ethos played out in the C++ community 5-ish years ago. It turned into a compiler with quadratic behavior, and eventually many people who didn't care at all about compiler performance cared a lot. It turns out that compiler speed makes development faster, keeps people interested in the language, and ultimately allows more iterations before release (which can be better for speed and safety than throwing in a bunch of extra compile steps).
- gnull 4y ago
  You misread my comment. I didn't say it was useless, I said there are things with higher priority. And well… unlike Rust, C++ sucked at some of those things too, this I think makes them different. Rust offers a better trade-off between compilation time and other parameters, than C++.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    They didn't say it was useless either; they also said it wasn't a high priority. Developer velocity and ergonomics should always be a high priority for compiler writers.
    - gnull 4y ago
      "High" as in "higher than runtime speed, safety, abstractions, plugin system"? Where would you put it if you had to rank compilation speed with other criteria? And let's admit even though Rust compilation speed could use some improvement, it's not terrible.
    - gnull 4y ago
      I re-read it. Yes, they're not saying it's useless, but then what are they objecting to?
cardanome 4y ago
Rust could have been designed for faster compilation without sacrificing runtime speed, safety, good abstractions, expressiveness and whatnot in any regard. The people designing Rust just either did not care or did not have the experience to do so. And it can not be fixed anymore because that would require too much breaking changes. And yes, a substantial time is also spent for things like the borrow checker but no all of it. An no, it is not a niche requirement. Short compile times are absolutely critical for developer productivity. One main reason Golang exists and got popular is that people got fed up with how slow C++ is to compile. Not to mention that most people on this earth are not as privileged as to have a beefy machine.
- howinteresting 4y ago
  cargo check is pretty fast.
- gnull 4y ago
  > Rust could have been designed for faster compilation without sacrificing runtime speed, safety, good abstractions, expressiveness Can you back this up? I'm not a programming language expert, so if there's some common knowledge you're referring to, I'm not aware of it. > most people on this earth are not as privileged There's very little "privilege" you need to compile Rust. In my spare time, I develop mainly in Haskell on my ThinkPad X270 and it goes just fine. Building libraries takes time, yes, but you need to do it just once. And while it's building you can think with a piece of paper more — also privilege in a way.

by gnull 4y ago

It's a fair remark, but your requirement is very niche. There's very few people who will value compilation time over runtime speed, safety, good abstractions, expressiveness.

pclmulqdq 4y ago

This ethos played out in the C++ community 5-ish years ago. It turned into a compiler with quadratic behavior, and eventually many people who didn't care at all about compiler performance cared a lot. It turns out that compiler speed makes development faster, keeps people interested in the language, and ultimately allows more iterations before release (which can be better for speed and safety than throwing in a bunch of extra compile steps).

gnull 4y ago
You misread my comment. I didn't say it was useless, I said there are things with higher priority. And well… unlike Rust, C++ sucked at some of those things too, this I think makes them different. Rust offers a better trade-off between compilation time and other parameters, than C++.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  They didn't say it was useless either; they also said it wasn't a high priority. Developer velocity and ergonomics should always be a high priority for compiler writers.
  - gnull 4y ago
    "High" as in "higher than runtime speed, safety, abstractions, plugin system"? Where would you put it if you had to rank compilation speed with other criteria? And let's admit even though Rust compilation speed could use some improvement, it's not terrible.
  - gnull 4y ago
    I re-read it. Yes, they're not saying it's useless, but then what are they objecting to?

cardanome 4y ago

Rust could have been designed for faster compilation without sacrificing runtime speed, safety, good abstractions, expressiveness and whatnot in any regard. The people designing Rust just either did not care or did not have the experience to do so. And it can not be fixed anymore because that would require too much breaking changes. And yes, a substantial time is also spent for things like the borrow checker but no all of it. An no, it is not a niche requirement. Short compile times are absolutely critical for developer productivity. One main reason Golang exists and got popular is that people got fed up with how slow C++ is to compile. Not to mention that most people on this earth are not as privileged as to have a beefy machine.

howinteresting 4y ago
cargo check is pretty fast.
gnull 4y ago
> Rust could have been designed for faster compilation without sacrificing runtime speed, safety, good abstractions, expressiveness Can you back this up? I'm not a programming language expert, so if there's some common knowledge you're referring to, I'm not aware of it. > most people on this earth are not as privileged There's very little "privilege" you need to compile Rust. In my spare time, I develop mainly in Haskell on my ThinkPad X270 and it goes just fine. Building libraries takes time, yes, but you need to do it just once. And while it's building you can think with a piece of paper more — also privilege in a way.