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They are not for majority of programs, but they are essential in the niches that Rust and Zig target. This is why it took so long to have a viable alternative
by pornel 4y ago
They are not for majority of programs, but they are essential in the niches that Rust and Zig target.
This is why it took so long to have a viable alternative to C and C++. Every other language decided "memory management is hard, GC is fine for 99% of programs, let's go with GC", and language after language kept disqualifying itself from the no-GC niche.
From the Rust intro talk: http://venge.net/graydon/talks/intro-talk-2.pdf http://venge.net/graydon/talks/intro-talk-2.pdf
> • Everyone is dodging the niche I'm interested in.
- netbioserror 4y agoA great point. As I’ve commented before though, watching webdevs get excited for it, or “rewrite it in Rust,” or developers contort it to try and do things it shouldn’t is sort of morbid from a distance. I’m sure Darwin will work his magic and Rust will settle in the intended niche. But seeing the insane excitement levels and recruiters using Rust to attract applicants…like I said, morbid, and hard to sustain.
- pornel 4y agoRust has features besides memory safety that are generally useful — robust error handling, pattern matching, fast and powerful JSON support, nice package manager, ease of deployment, first-class WASM support, etc. Some people value these features enough to use Rust even outside of its niche. Even when performance isn't critical, it may be a nice to have. I sometimes feel like Rust is overcompensating for its hard parts :) It's not easy to learn its memory management, but the error messages do their best to teach you!