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> Rust is easy to learn. For seasoned C++ programmers, Rust is easy to learn. When they first start out, Rust learners usually spend most of their time making s

> Rust is easy to learn. For seasoned C++ programmers, Rust is easy to learn. When they first start out, Rust learners usually spend most of their time making sense of ownership and lifetime. Even if they don't explicitly express these concepts in code, experienced C++ engineers always keep these two concepts in mind when programming in C++. Finally somebody understands this.

lubesGordi 4y ago
I was happy to see this as well. As a 'seasoned' C++ dev myself, when I learned Rust, I was pleasantly surprised to see those implicit concepts made explicit in code.
- monocasa 4y ago
  Same. I think that I didn't go through the Rc<RefCell> phase that so many new to Rust go through because of C++ teaching me the same lessons in a much more brutal way. By the time I got to Rust I had learned to structure my code to sort of use pointers/references as capabilities, such that simply having knowledge of the bit pattern of the pointer was implicit access through that pointer since as a codebase evolves someone will keep pointers around or not go through.whatever song and dance you need to do to keep accesses through that pointer valid. That thought process translates very well to Rust.
  - techdragon 4y ago
    What I love about Rust is what I love about Python… “explicit is better than implicit” When I open something up to read it, to try and understand it, to dig in and fix something broken… having everything be exposed in the explicitly written code… is vastly more useful to me than trying to mentally interpret a language as I read it and remember the rules, the meta-programming rules… and all the implicit stuff that can affect how the program will behave. Lot of programming languages aren’t good at this explicitness, and I’ll be honest, it’s a genuine struggle for me picking up the languages like this, only made worse when the documentation is very prose like and fails to convey how anything actually works, eschewing that in favour of, at length, demonstrating the feel of a programming language through countless demonstration example that lack mechanical “what is this doing under the hood” explanation.
JBits 4y ago
A few years ago I met up with someone who just graduated and who's only experience with programming was MATLAB during his degree. To my surprise he'd been hired to use Rust and was telling me how great the recently released async was.
victorvosk 4y ago
Hot take, I feel like people that complain Rust is hard typically write bade code in other languages. Rust is just preventing you from making common mistakes or using patterns that make your code hard to reason about and debug later.
- qalmakka 4y ago
  This, this, and this again. Lots of patterns Rust enforces are sensible choices even with a garbage collector, because data races for instance are still a thing even if you have automatic memory management
- MuffinFlavored 4y ago
  As somebody who could possibly be in the category you described, once I learned about Arc+Mutex, I pretty much write code the same way I used to. That and maybe OnceCell/Lazy?
- verdagon 4y ago
  As a fellow Rust user, please stop saying this. Not everyone who codes like us is a bad programmer. It's this kind of sentiment that gives us a bad name. Rust may influence us into patterns that are better in some (likely even most) situations, but not always. Sometimes the situation calls for other approaches, and that's okay.
  - kupopuffs 4y ago
    Think you're misunderstanding the OP. Do you think rust is hard to use?
    - sidlls 4y ago
      The OP is crapping on people who find Rust hard to learn by broad-brushing them into the "bad programmer" bucket. It's a hallmark of Rust zealots, and one reason why the Rust community has such a bad name. Which is a shame because the language is decent and useful.
pjmlp 4y ago
Kind of, as someone that knows C++ since 1993, I can assure that getting Rust right for doing GUI programing wasn't that straightforward.
sanderjd 4y ago
I think lots of people understand this :)
intelVISA 4y ago
As someone with a passable level of modern C++ exp it took about a week to pick up Rust. Syntax was the time sink... Though, people tend to gloss over that C++20 is decently comparable to Rust in terms of semantics and safety, the issue is very few C++ codebases are modern and the footguns are still lurking for the careless. That said, Rust iterators are very nice and the async story completely mocks the C++20 coroutine nonsense.
fooker 4y ago
I disagree. Rust is not difficult because of lifetimes, it just gets in the way of freely prototyping what you want. This situation is slowly improving with the compiler getting better and better. Then there is some annoying macro usage. Some Rust code looks truly alien.
- hamilyon2 4y ago
  Is rust code heavily seasoned with unsafe keyword really that hard to prototype in? Is it meaningfully harder than c++ in this regard?
  - spoiler 4y ago
    I assume they didn't mean compared to C++. If anything, saying prototyping in C++ is easier than Rust is beyond ludicrous even if you're a seasoned C++ developer. I'd have an easier time prototyping in Rust than C++, and I've been writing C++ for 10 years and Rust for a little over a year. However, prototype in something like Ruby (or even TypeScript, and some people mentioned Elixir) is in a different universe compared to C++ or Rust. Like, it's not even a "fair fight" to compare it meaningfully.
    - cozzyd 4y ago
      Well there are C++ repls available. Maybe there are rust ones too?
    - GuB-42 4y ago
      What makes Rust better at rapid prototyping? Cargo? I find that modern C++ "kitchen sink" approach to features makes it good for rapid prototyping, a bit like Perl on the dynamic side. It won't force you into a specific approach, pick the one that gets you there the fastest. Use raw pointers and malloc(), or use fancy smart pointers and RAII, your choice, you can also do both, you have exceptions, you have goto, you can write(), printf() and cout, you have classes and lambdas and (multiple) inheritance and traits. More options are better for rapid prototyping. Also, C++ is the most popular language for competitive programming, you can't get more "rapid" than that.

lubesGordi 4y ago

I was happy to see this as well. As a 'seasoned' C++ dev myself, when I learned Rust, I was pleasantly surprised to see those implicit concepts made explicit in code.

monocasa 4y ago
Same. I think that I didn't go through the Rc<RefCell> phase that so many new to Rust go through because of C++ teaching me the same lessons in a much more brutal way. By the time I got to Rust I had learned to structure my code to sort of use pointers/references as capabilities, such that simply having knowledge of the bit pattern of the pointer was implicit access through that pointer since as a codebase evolves someone will keep pointers around or not go through.whatever song and dance you need to do to keep accesses through that pointer valid. That thought process translates very well to Rust.
- techdragon 4y ago
  What I love about Rust is what I love about Python… “explicit is better than implicit” When I open something up to read it, to try and understand it, to dig in and fix something broken… having everything be exposed in the explicitly written code… is vastly more useful to me than trying to mentally interpret a language as I read it and remember the rules, the meta-programming rules… and all the implicit stuff that can affect how the program will behave. Lot of programming languages aren’t good at this explicitness, and I’ll be honest, it’s a genuine struggle for me picking up the languages like this, only made worse when the documentation is very prose like and fails to convey how anything actually works, eschewing that in favour of, at length, demonstrating the feel of a programming language through countless demonstration example that lack mechanical “what is this doing under the hood” explanation.

JBits 4y ago

A few years ago I met up with someone who just graduated and who's only experience with programming was MATLAB during his degree. To my surprise he'd been hired to use Rust and was telling me how great the recently released async was.

victorvosk 4y ago

Hot take, I feel like people that complain Rust is hard typically write bade code in other languages. Rust is just preventing you from making common mistakes or using patterns that make your code hard to reason about and debug later.

qalmakka 4y ago
This, this, and this again. Lots of patterns Rust enforces are sensible choices even with a garbage collector, because data races for instance are still a thing even if you have automatic memory management
MuffinFlavored 4y ago
As somebody who could possibly be in the category you described, once I learned about Arc+Mutex, I pretty much write code the same way I used to. That and maybe OnceCell/Lazy?
verdagon 4y ago
As a fellow Rust user, please stop saying this. Not everyone who codes like us is a bad programmer. It's this kind of sentiment that gives us a bad name. Rust may influence us into patterns that are better in some (likely even most) situations, but not always. Sometimes the situation calls for other approaches, and that's okay.
- kupopuffs 4y ago
  Think you're misunderstanding the OP. Do you think rust is hard to use?
  - sidlls 4y ago
    The OP is crapping on people who find Rust hard to learn by broad-brushing them into the "bad programmer" bucket. It's a hallmark of Rust zealots, and one reason why the Rust community has such a bad name. Which is a shame because the language is decent and useful.

pjmlp 4y ago

Kind of, as someone that knows C++ since 1993, I can assure that getting Rust right for doing GUI programing wasn't that straightforward.

sanderjd 4y ago

I think lots of people understand this :)

intelVISA 4y ago

As someone with a passable level of modern C++ exp it took about a week to pick up Rust. Syntax was the time sink... Though, people tend to gloss over that C++20 is decently comparable to Rust in terms of semantics and safety, the issue is very few C++ codebases are modern and the footguns are still lurking for the careless. That said, Rust iterators are very nice and the async story completely mocks the C++20 coroutine nonsense.

fooker 4y ago

I disagree. Rust is not difficult because of lifetimes, it just gets in the way of freely prototyping what you want. This situation is slowly improving with the compiler getting better and better. Then there is some annoying macro usage. Some Rust code looks truly alien.

hamilyon2 4y ago
Is rust code heavily seasoned with unsafe keyword really that hard to prototype in? Is it meaningfully harder than c++ in this regard?
- spoiler 4y ago
  I assume they didn't mean compared to C++. If anything, saying prototyping in C++ is easier than Rust is beyond ludicrous even if you're a seasoned C++ developer. I'd have an easier time prototyping in Rust than C++, and I've been writing C++ for 10 years and Rust for a little over a year. However, prototype in something like Ruby (or even TypeScript, and some people mentioned Elixir) is in a different universe compared to C++ or Rust. Like, it's not even a "fair fight" to compare it meaningfully.
  - cozzyd 4y ago
    Well there are C++ repls available. Maybe there are rust ones too?
  - GuB-42 4y ago
    What makes Rust better at rapid prototyping? Cargo? I find that modern C++ "kitchen sink" approach to features makes it good for rapid prototyping, a bit like Perl on the dynamic side. It won't force you into a specific approach, pick the one that gets you there the fastest. Use raw pointers and malloc(), or use fancy smart pointers and RAII, your choice, you can also do both, you have exceptions, you have goto, you can write(), printf() and cout, you have classes and lambdas and (multiple) inheritance and traits. More options are better for rapid prototyping. Also, C++ is the most popular language for competitive programming, you can't get more "rapid" than that.