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We developers love so much to learn computer stuff that we want to do it even when we don't need to. I worked on data science, computational science, some syst

We developers love so much to learn computer stuff that we want to do it even when we don't need to. I worked on data science, computational science, some system engineering and embedded projects. I tried Rust on all of them but it was valuable only for the third. In data science the focus is more on speed of development and as much as Rust is more enjoyable to use than C++, it doesn't match scripting languages (namely Python) for the flexibility you get, the easiness with which you can adapt to changes and the lack of a need to focus too much on machine-related details. This is the least suited field for Rust between the one I mentioned, in my view. Computational science needs to focus on algorithms and formulas, Rust can hide them a bit too much under "unwrap"s "iter"s and so on. Plus still no stellar library support and (my) experience with other tools (namely C + OpenMP, Julia, C++, numpy...) made me feel using Rust for that was unnecessary and slower. When you are designing systems, however, that's where Rust is a complete game changer. Honestly I don't think C++ can stand a chance in its current level. Everything, from the package system, to the borrow checker, to the safe threading model, makes you pity your C++ ancestors for how hard they thought this kind of programming had to be. Rust makes it orders of magnitude more approachable, saner, and with better results too. Embedded... it's nice but honestly all the dark arts of unsafe Rust are not standardized so it doesn't feel as future-proof as C already.

pjmlp 4y ago
Rust still needs to do a lot of catching up in HPC, HFT, GUI, game engines, console SDKs, OS drivers on Apple and Microsoft OSes, Arduino, LLVM and GCC,... Rust threading is only safe between threads accessing data structures in process own memory. It does nothing for shared resources using OS IPC, or external resources shared among threads. It will certainly improve, as hopefully C++ will, even it never gets 100% as safe as Rust, the ecosystem has too much weight for decades to come.
- adwn 4y ago
  > Rust threading is only safe between threads accessing data structures in process own memory. "Only". Intra-process shared memory is by far the most important kind of shared memory. 80% of the time you see someone advocating for message-passing multi-process over shared memory multi-thread concurrency or parallelism, it's because shared mutable memory is incredibly hard to get right in just about every mainstream language except for Rust. > It does nothing for shared resources using OS IPC, or external resources shared among threads. Only partially true. The very same language constructs which make shared memory safe can also be used to create safe wrappers for other shared resources.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Not in the age of microservices. Language constructs only help if there are no other applications accessing the same resources.
    - adwn 4y ago
      > Not in the age of microservices. There's a huge world outside of microservices. > Language constructs only help if there are no other applications accessing the same resources. You're mistaken. Rust's language constructs can often help you write safe wrappers around inter-process communication and synchronization mechanisms. Of course, all bets are off if the other processes don't adhere to the agreed-upon IPC protocol, but that's not the point. The point is that Rust makes it easier to not accidentally screw up the protocol yourself.
      - pjmlp 4y ago
        That is indeed the point, as most projects don't use a single language in isolation.
        adwn 4y ago
        So now you're arguing that Rust won't help because it doesn't fix the deficiencies of other languages? So what? At least you'll have fewer defects in those parts that do use Rust.
- vvanders 4y ago
  I feel like this was true a few years ago but things have changed a lot recently. In my opinion Bevy may be one of the better ECS implementations I've seen, as ex-gamedev it's just very well thought through. It's never going to supplant Unity or Unreal but that's less of a language issue than just the scope of those codebases. You're seeing a lot more of it showing up in OSes across Android, Linux and I've seen a fair bit of movement in the windows space as well. As for IPC, C/C++ doesn't help you their either, that's more of a framework level concern. If anything the threading model helps when you're doing concurrent IPC dispatch(ex: MTA COM or equivalent high throughput IPC) and preventing data races.
rockisch 4y ago
Idk how long ago you tried doing embedded Rust, but nowadays it is quite decent. I think I'd choose Rust over C for embedded 99% of the time.

pjmlp 4y ago

Rust still needs to do a lot of catching up in HPC, HFT, GUI, game engines, console SDKs, OS drivers on Apple and Microsoft OSes, Arduino, LLVM and GCC,... Rust threading is only safe between threads accessing data structures in process own memory. It does nothing for shared resources using OS IPC, or external resources shared among threads. It will certainly improve, as hopefully C++ will, even it never gets 100% as safe as Rust, the ecosystem has too much weight for decades to come.

adwn 4y ago
> Rust threading is only safe between threads accessing data structures in process own memory. "Only". Intra-process shared memory is by far the most important kind of shared memory. 80% of the time you see someone advocating for message-passing multi-process over shared memory multi-thread concurrency or parallelism, it's because shared mutable memory is incredibly hard to get right in just about every mainstream language except for Rust. > It does nothing for shared resources using OS IPC, or external resources shared among threads. Only partially true. The very same language constructs which make shared memory safe can also be used to create safe wrappers for other shared resources.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Not in the age of microservices. Language constructs only help if there are no other applications accessing the same resources.
  - adwn 4y ago
    > Not in the age of microservices. There's a huge world outside of microservices. > Language constructs only help if there are no other applications accessing the same resources. You're mistaken. Rust's language constructs can often help you write safe wrappers around inter-process communication and synchronization mechanisms. Of course, all bets are off if the other processes don't adhere to the agreed-upon IPC protocol, but that's not the point. The point is that Rust makes it easier to not accidentally screw up the protocol yourself.
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      That is indeed the point, as most projects don't use a single language in isolation.
      - adwn 4y ago
        So now you're arguing that Rust won't help because it doesn't fix the deficiencies of other languages? So what? At least you'll have fewer defects in those parts that do use Rust.
vvanders 4y ago
I feel like this was true a few years ago but things have changed a lot recently. In my opinion Bevy may be one of the better ECS implementations I've seen, as ex-gamedev it's just very well thought through. It's never going to supplant Unity or Unreal but that's less of a language issue than just the scope of those codebases. You're seeing a lot more of it showing up in OSes across Android, Linux and I've seen a fair bit of movement in the windows space as well. As for IPC, C/C++ doesn't help you their either, that's more of a framework level concern. If anything the threading model helps when you're doing concurrent IPC dispatch(ex: MTA COM or equivalent high throughput IPC) and preventing data races.

rockisch 4y ago

Idk how long ago you tried doing embedded Rust, but nowadays it is quite decent. I think I'd choose Rust over C for embedded 99% of the time.