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Right but my main point is this: Rust comes with additional risk. It is easier to leak memory, it is easier to be unsafe (especially since you can't guarantee

by 3a2d29 4y ago

Right but my main point is this: Rust comes with additional risk. It is easier to leak memory, it is easier to be unsafe (especially since you can't guarantee what future other devs will do), but you gain nothing. You get all that risk, but fearless concurrency can be done in GC languages (like Elixir) and many people have created the Result type before. So you have added risk for no benefit. Not to mention its easier to hire devs (and train devs) for other GC languages cause not everyone knows or understands the borrow checker. Is there any advantage?

nicoburns 4y ago
> It is easier to leak memory I'm not convinced about this at all. I've had far more issues with memory leaks in JavaScript programs than I have with Rust. The only way you're really likely to leak memory in Rust is creating cycles of Rc and Arc types. But I don't think any of my programs have even contained Rc, and only trivial usages of Arc for global resources, which I absolutely wouldn't want to point to each other. JavaScript will let you create the same problem without making it obvious with type signatures. And while you might be lucky and have the GC sort out your mess, it doesn't always manage to.
satvikpendem 4y ago
I mentioned the benefits elsewhere. Faster, more throughput, uses far less memory, more ergonomic developer experience (Elixir for example is not statically typed), rock solid stability (my API and anecdotally those of others I hear have never crashed). The risk is small compared to the benefits. I'm not sure why you keep saying there aren't benefits because there are. Now you might not agree they're good enough for you, but they exist.
- 3a2d29 4y ago
  Fair, but again I think you can get all those things with a GC language. Speed is the only one you may possibly not, but I think speed is an non-issue. Speed in programming never matters except in the systems space. No one is gonna be able to tell Rust vs Go in a web API and depending on how you do the benchmark, I think many GC languages can probably tie Rust.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Speed in programming never matters except in the systems space. It matters to whoever is paying for compute. If you get some other benefit, it may be a worthwhile tradeoff, but it always matters.
  - satvikpendem 4y ago
    > Speed in programming never matters except in the systems space. This kind of attitude is how we get bloated Electron apps that HN (including me) loves to complain about. Speed should be a first class consideration, not something to throw away for later. > No one is gonna be able to tell Rust vs Go in a web API Debatable, Discord moved from Go to Rust [0] because they were getting latency and CPU spikes from Go's GC, and I'd assume that's the same with any GC language because, well, the GC has to run sometime. Now you might say that we're not all Discord scale, to which I'd say, like above, there are benefits to Rust that are more than just speed. Cargo alone is nigh unbeatable compared to some other languages. I was trying to get Python to work the other day and was pulling my hair out over venv, virtualenv, pip, conda etc. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26227339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26227339
    - mancini0 4y ago
      The problem with Cargo is it only builds rust. I agree it's the best language-specific build tool, but I love the monorepo pattern and future proofing insurances that modern language agnostic build systems like Bazel enable / provide.
    - 3a2d29 4y ago
      Bloated is the problem, not language speed. I may have misspoke, what I meant was speed in language never matters. And the discord instance was because it was systems/performance critical software they rewrote. They didn’t rewrite there web APIs. Discord mentioned the rewrite is now rust with C++ glueing it together. No way you are using C++ unless you have to. I’ll agree with you on python venv/pip. Ugh what a mess. I like cargo, but honestly I think you could argue cargo also is an issue. When you bring in 100 crates, you just gotta hope all the unsafe code in them are safe. A static analyzer found 200 memory unsafety issues in rust crates: https://www.infoq.com/news/2021/11/rudra-rust-safety/ https://www.infoq.com/news/2021/11/rudra-rust-safety/ Memory safe GC languages you don’t have to worry about that, and you can get a package manager.

by 3a2d29 4y ago

nicoburns 4y ago

> It is easier to leak memory I'm not convinced about this at all. I've had far more issues with memory leaks in JavaScript programs than I have with Rust. The only way you're really likely to leak memory in Rust is creating cycles of Rc and Arc types. But I don't think any of my programs have even contained Rc, and only trivial usages of Arc for global resources, which I absolutely wouldn't want to point to each other. JavaScript will let you create the same problem without making it obvious with type signatures. And while you might be lucky and have the GC sort out your mess, it doesn't always manage to.

satvikpendem 4y ago

I mentioned the benefits elsewhere. Faster, more throughput, uses far less memory, more ergonomic developer experience (Elixir for example is not statically typed), rock solid stability (my API and anecdotally those of others I hear have never crashed). The risk is small compared to the benefits. I'm not sure why you keep saying there aren't benefits because there are. Now you might not agree they're good enough for you, but they exist.

3a2d29 4y ago
Fair, but again I think you can get all those things with a GC language. Speed is the only one you may possibly not, but I think speed is an non-issue. Speed in programming never matters except in the systems space. No one is gonna be able to tell Rust vs Go in a web API and depending on how you do the benchmark, I think many GC languages can probably tie Rust.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Speed in programming never matters except in the systems space. It matters to whoever is paying for compute. If you get some other benefit, it may be a worthwhile tradeoff, but it always matters.
- satvikpendem 4y ago
  > Speed in programming never matters except in the systems space. This kind of attitude is how we get bloated Electron apps that HN (including me) loves to complain about. Speed should be a first class consideration, not something to throw away for later. > No one is gonna be able to tell Rust vs Go in a web API Debatable, Discord moved from Go to Rust [0] because they were getting latency and CPU spikes from Go's GC, and I'd assume that's the same with any GC language because, well, the GC has to run sometime. Now you might say that we're not all Discord scale, to which I'd say, like above, there are benefits to Rust that are more than just speed. Cargo alone is nigh unbeatable compared to some other languages. I was trying to get Python to work the other day and was pulling my hair out over venv, virtualenv, pip, conda etc. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26227339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26227339
  - mancini0 4y ago
    The problem with Cargo is it only builds rust. I agree it's the best language-specific build tool, but I love the monorepo pattern and future proofing insurances that modern language agnostic build systems like Bazel enable / provide.
  - 3a2d29 4y ago
    Bloated is the problem, not language speed. I may have misspoke, what I meant was speed in language never matters. And the discord instance was because it was systems/performance critical software they rewrote. They didn’t rewrite there web APIs. Discord mentioned the rewrite is now rust with C++ glueing it together. No way you are using C++ unless you have to. I’ll agree with you on python venv/pip. Ugh what a mess. I like cargo, but honestly I think you could argue cargo also is an issue. When you bring in 100 crates, you just gotta hope all the unsafe code in them are safe. A static analyzer found 200 memory unsafety issues in rust crates: https://www.infoq.com/news/2021/11/rudra-rust-safety/ https://www.infoq.com/news/2021/11/rudra-rust-safety/ Memory safe GC languages you don’t have to worry about that, and you can get a package manager.