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http://scihi.org/frederick-great-potato/ http://scihi.org/frederick-great-potato/ To increase rust adoption you need to cultivate FOMO - create an aura of "rus

http://scihi.org/frederick-great-potato/ http://scihi.org/frederick-great-potato/ To increase rust adoption you need to cultivate FOMO - create an aura of "rust is a secret weapon", which it is in certain cases (safety critical performant code). Rust isn't really meant for prototypes. So don't expect Rust adoption to be in the range of Python or JS/TS. Expect it to max out in C++/Java adoption. It needs a champion web framework like django, rails, or phoenix. Don't give adopters an overabundance of choice, or they'll recoil. It already has a better packager than most languages. If Rust shows that its 10x better than Java and C++ in terms of productivity - it will have no problem getting adoption. Just need more promotion on how much easier it is to work with than C++

josephg 4y ago
I’ve been writing rust full time for the last 2 years, and I’m going to make a bold prediction: I don’t think rust will displace Java at all. Rust is a gorgeous language and I love it, but it optimizes for making good binaries over being easy to learn and use. Java shops don’t use Java because it’s clever, clean or fast. They use Java because it’s a known quantity, it works, it’ll outlive everyone and it’s easy to hire for. Java is popular precisely because it’s not new or shiny. Because there isn’t a new framework every week that you need to learn to stay on top of things. Java is a language for late adopters, who said no to Scala, Clojure and Kotlin. Why would they switch to rust? If rust displaces anything it’ll be systems languages - C and C++ in web browsers, databases, Linux, embedded systems and some video games. And safety critical systems like helicopter control systems. It remains to be seen if it makes any serious inroads in web services. I can still throw web services together in nodejs dozens of times faster than I can in rust. Rust isn’t trying to be the world’s most productive language. Rust would rather complex syntax and fast binaries than simple syntax and slow binaries. So it’ll always be harder to learn than Go, Java, C# or Swift. I honestly think Swift - if it had rust’s tooling and ecosystem - is a better language for general purpose computing. Rust is a lovely language, but like every other language, it’s no magic bullet. Add it to your toolbox, but don’t throw out your other tools.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  Back in the mid-1990s, Java was the first type- and memory-safe language to be widely adopted in the enterprise. It was, in a sense, the Rust equivalent of its day when compared to the previous standard of C++. It may have been a lot slower and clunkier than C++ back then or Rust today but this mattered less in the 1990s when if anything, its unique cross-platform development story would've made it feasible to seamlessly deploy it on high-performance servers and midrange machines. Sure, today Java/C# are mostly adopted as a matter of convenience but this wasn't always the case.
- lucidguppy 4y ago
  Very good points - I agree. Kotlin and other Java++ languages would be their goto rather than rust.
- HideousKojima 4y ago
  I'll give another reason: the typical Java (and JS/Python/whatever) developer doesn't have the knowledge, dedication, and interest to learn it. And companies don't care about maximizing performance in most cases, they want good enough for cheap enough, and a decent Rust dev is going to cost more than a decent Java or .NET dev
  - zozbot234 4y ago
    Dedication and interest among developers will grow when compelling stuff starts to be written in Rust. Same as Java in the 1990s, .net, Python and Ruby in the 2000s or JS in the 2010s.
    - HideousKojima 4y ago
      No, I'm saying the typical dev doesn't have any interest in learning anything new beyond what they already know, and some hot new thing in Rust isn't going to change that. The level of mental effort needed to learn Rust is greater than the typical dev is willing to expend on anything.
- allochthon 4y ago
jeremychone 4y ago
I think Axum has the potential to be the top web framework. Not too high, not too low, very well designed and complete, and well maintained with healthy momentum. It has become our web framework for web services and web app backend. Not sure we will ever see a "rails" like framework in Rust (for the better IMO)
- likeabbas 4y ago
  Axum, Tonic, Serde, and Tower are extremely powerful together. They make building APIs so straight forward. I do wish we could add a few features for free, such as interning JSON strings (which you can do easily via a new library) but this set up is so pleasant to use that I believe it will stay for a long time.
- chromatin 4y ago
  I have recently written a service in Axum (our main API is written in Rocket), and absolutely LOVE it, especially the macro-free API. Next full backend project will be in Axum for sure.
Animats 4y ago
> (Rust) champion web framework As I've said before, Go is more appropriate than Rust for web back end work. The libraries are well debugged, because Google uses them internally. The "goroutine" approach gets rid of the thread/async problem. Garbage collection means not having to think too much about memory management. Rust is harder. I write mostly in Rust (36,000 lines in the last two years) but for something hard, a high-performance metaverse client. It's overkill for your shopping cart. (I suspect that the next generation of "champion web framework" will be something that you talk to in English and it generates routine web front and back ends. Probably as a service.)

josephg 4y ago

I’ve been writing rust full time for the last 2 years, and I’m going to make a bold prediction: I don’t think rust will displace Java at all. Rust is a gorgeous language and I love it, but it optimizes for making good binaries over being easy to learn and use. Java shops don’t use Java because it’s clever, clean or fast. They use Java because it’s a known quantity, it works, it’ll outlive everyone and it’s easy to hire for. Java is popular precisely because it’s not new or shiny. Because there isn’t a new framework every week that you need to learn to stay on top of things. Java is a language for late adopters, who said no to Scala, Clojure and Kotlin. Why would they switch to rust? If rust displaces anything it’ll be systems languages - C and C++ in web browsers, databases, Linux, embedded systems and some video games. And safety critical systems like helicopter control systems. It remains to be seen if it makes any serious inroads in web services. I can still throw web services together in nodejs dozens of times faster than I can in rust. Rust isn’t trying to be the world’s most productive language. Rust would rather complex syntax and fast binaries than simple syntax and slow binaries. So it’ll always be harder to learn than Go, Java, C# or Swift. I honestly think Swift - if it had rust’s tooling and ecosystem - is a better language for general purpose computing. Rust is a lovely language, but like every other language, it’s no magic bullet. Add it to your toolbox, but don’t throw out your other tools.

zozbot234 4y ago
Back in the mid-1990s, Java was the first type- and memory-safe language to be widely adopted in the enterprise. It was, in a sense, the Rust equivalent of its day when compared to the previous standard of C++. It may have been a lot slower and clunkier than C++ back then or Rust today but this mattered less in the 1990s when if anything, its unique cross-platform development story would've made it feasible to seamlessly deploy it on high-performance servers and midrange machines. Sure, today Java/C# are mostly adopted as a matter of convenience but this wasn't always the case.
lucidguppy 4y ago
Very good points - I agree. Kotlin and other Java++ languages would be their goto rather than rust.
HideousKojima 4y ago
I'll give another reason: the typical Java (and JS/Python/whatever) developer doesn't have the knowledge, dedication, and interest to learn it. And companies don't care about maximizing performance in most cases, they want good enough for cheap enough, and a decent Rust dev is going to cost more than a decent Java or .NET dev
- zozbot234 4y ago
  Dedication and interest among developers will grow when compelling stuff starts to be written in Rust. Same as Java in the 1990s, .net, Python and Ruby in the 2000s or JS in the 2010s.
  - HideousKojima 4y ago
    No, I'm saying the typical dev doesn't have any interest in learning anything new beyond what they already know, and some hot new thing in Rust isn't going to change that. The level of mental effort needed to learn Rust is greater than the typical dev is willing to expend on anything.
allochthon 4y ago

jeremychone 4y ago

I think Axum has the potential to be the top web framework. Not too high, not too low, very well designed and complete, and well maintained with healthy momentum. It has become our web framework for web services and web app backend. Not sure we will ever see a "rails" like framework in Rust (for the better IMO)

likeabbas 4y ago
Axum, Tonic, Serde, and Tower are extremely powerful together. They make building APIs so straight forward. I do wish we could add a few features for free, such as interning JSON strings (which you can do easily via a new library) but this set up is so pleasant to use that I believe it will stay for a long time.
chromatin 4y ago
I have recently written a service in Axum (our main API is written in Rocket), and absolutely LOVE it, especially the macro-free API. Next full backend project will be in Axum for sure.

Animats 4y ago

> (Rust) champion web framework As I've said before, Go is more appropriate than Rust for web back end work. The libraries are well debugged, because Google uses them internally. The "goroutine" approach gets rid of the thread/async problem. Garbage collection means not having to think too much about memory management. Rust is harder. I write mostly in Rust (36,000 lines in the last two years) but for something hard, a high-performance metaverse client. It's overkill for your shopping cart. (I suspect that the next generation of "champion web framework" will be something that you talk to in English and it generates routine web front and back ends. Probably as a service.)