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"Rust is the best, Rust is better, every other language sucks, let's rewrite everything in Rust" Come on, Rust has been here 16 years and its market share is a

"Rust is the best, Rust is better, every other language sucks, let's rewrite everything in Rust" Come on, Rust has been here 16 years and its market share is as good as Ada. These evangelists are the major reason in addition to its stdlib is not dynamic-link friendly that pushed me away from learning Rust.

estebank 4y ago
Interesting that you call it available for 16 years when 1.0 came out in 2015 and looked little like pre-1.0 Rust, and I would argue that no 1.0 language is usually successful until later releases. I would also say that Rust 1.0 is nowhere close to where it got to in 2018, let alone today. Python didn't become prevalent until 2.4 and Java didn't take off until at least 1.1.1. Elsewhere you claim nothing is written of note is written in Rust, and I would be interested in knowing what you base this on. Either we have different definitions on what makes a project significant, or you just haven't seen them. I do not know what level of market share you think would be needed for Rust to have been worth it, but given it was originally aimed at the ill-defined but somewhat niche "systems programming" space, and now it is being used up and down different layers of the tech stack I would call it a success of adoption.
thecodedmessage 4y ago
Author here! C++ has serious problems. Linus Torvalds agrees. Bryan Cantrill agrees. Many, many experienced systems programmers agree. Rust solves many of the problems with C++, as a systems programming language. That is the scope of my argument. I am not really sure in the modern software development world what problem dynamic linking of stdlib solves, especially since so much of stdlib would be monomorphized and/or inlined. C++ with any level of templates is far more unfriendly to dynamic linking -- and again, that is the only language of comparison in scope for this article.
- synergy20 4y ago
  Ada solved all those problems decades ago, it did not fly. C++ ran on rockets to the space, Rust has not yet. I don't even know any major projects or products are done with Rust for the last 16 years. "There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses".
  - thecodedmessage 4y ago
    Ada and Rust aren’t really comparable, and more importantly Ada and C++ aren’t really comparable. The key feature of Rust isn’t that it’s safe — many programming languages are, after all. The key feature of Rust is that it manages to have an explicit safe subset while maintaining C++’s goals of sophisticated zero-cost abstraction.

estebank 4y ago

Interesting that you call it available for 16 years when 1.0 came out in 2015 and looked little like pre-1.0 Rust, and I would argue that no 1.0 language is usually successful until later releases. I would also say that Rust 1.0 is nowhere close to where it got to in 2018, let alone today. Python didn't become prevalent until 2.4 and Java didn't take off until at least 1.1.1. Elsewhere you claim nothing is written of note is written in Rust, and I would be interested in knowing what you base this on. Either we have different definitions on what makes a project significant, or you just haven't seen them. I do not know what level of market share you think would be needed for Rust to have been worth it, but given it was originally aimed at the ill-defined but somewhat niche "systems programming" space, and now it is being used up and down different layers of the tech stack I would call it a success of adoption.

thecodedmessage 4y ago

Author here! C++ has serious problems. Linus Torvalds agrees. Bryan Cantrill agrees. Many, many experienced systems programmers agree. Rust solves many of the problems with C++, as a systems programming language. That is the scope of my argument. I am not really sure in the modern software development world what problem dynamic linking of stdlib solves, especially since so much of stdlib would be monomorphized and/or inlined. C++ with any level of templates is far more unfriendly to dynamic linking -- and again, that is the only language of comparison in scope for this article.

synergy20 4y ago
Ada solved all those problems decades ago, it did not fly. C++ ran on rockets to the space, Rust has not yet. I don't even know any major projects or products are done with Rust for the last 16 years. "There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses".
- thecodedmessage 4y ago
  Ada and Rust aren’t really comparable, and more importantly Ada and C++ aren’t really comparable. The key feature of Rust isn’t that it’s safe — many programming languages are, after all. The key feature of Rust is that it manages to have an explicit safe subset while maintaining C++’s goals of sophisticated zero-cost abstraction.