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I think the author misses one of the most important points: how easy/fast is it to write a program? Julia is dedicated to scientific computing, where it is ver

I think the author misses one of the most important points: how easy/fast is it to write a program? Julia is dedicated to scientific computing, where it is very normal to start out with solving a simple problem to verify that your approach can work. That code is usually very bad, because all it needs to do is function. The goal of Julia is to: - Make writing that first prototype very easy - Use that prototype to create a fast version, without reimplementing everything That is what rust has to be compared to. And while I absolutely do like what rust is, it is not a language that lends itself to quick prototyping. For the prototype you don't care that your program might crash with the wrong parameter or that the generated matrix is not invertible or that you access an array out of bounds or ... By any measure rust is a complex language, which takes significant understanding to write and requires the programmer to engage with the code alot.

jjnoakes 3y ago
> it is not a language that lends itself to quick prototyping Maybe it depends on your perspective, or maybe it is simply personal preference, but I find rust pleasant and quick to prototype in.
- 4hg4ufxhy 3y ago
  I think so as well. And it's quite easy to go from prototype to production by starting from removing unwraps. To be fair I'm not familiar with Julia so I'm not making any comparisons.
- derstander 3y ago
  > Maybe it depends on your perspective, or maybe it is simply personal preference, but I find rust pleasant and quick to prototype in. Or, perhaps more importantly, on use case. It’s hard for me to imagine (though certainly possible, I suppose) someone finding prototyping e.g. sensor processing algorithms in Rust more enjoyable than Julia, or faster for that matter.
- IceSentry 3y ago
  It's one of the thing that annoys me the most about these discussions. The best language to prototype in is the one you know the most. For me and probably for you too, that's rust. So it's trivial for me to start a new project and have everything I need very quickly. With pretty much any other languages I need to relearn some syntax or apis which is a massive waste of time when prototyping.
- patrick451 3y ago
  I'm not here do doubt your comfort in rust, but I do think that prototyping scientific software involves more than just iterating on code. Personally, my development process of is just different for that kind of code because it's easier and faster to debug through plots than traditional logging/breakpoints/whatever. Personally, I feel more proficient in c++ than python, but I will still prototype in python. Half the reason for this is that I can set a breakpoint anywhere in program, and produce an interactive plot in about 3 seconds. Julia has a similar advantage here. Maybe there are tricks I don't know, but it's a massive pain to do this in languages like rust and c++.
isatty 3y ago
Exactly. There is no need to shoehorn rust into absolutely everything. Right tools for the job.

jjnoakes 3y ago

> it is not a language that lends itself to quick prototyping Maybe it depends on your perspective, or maybe it is simply personal preference, but I find rust pleasant and quick to prototype in.

4hg4ufxhy 3y ago
I think so as well. And it's quite easy to go from prototype to production by starting from removing unwraps. To be fair I'm not familiar with Julia so I'm not making any comparisons.
derstander 3y ago
> Maybe it depends on your perspective, or maybe it is simply personal preference, but I find rust pleasant and quick to prototype in. Or, perhaps more importantly, on use case. It’s hard for me to imagine (though certainly possible, I suppose) someone finding prototyping e.g. sensor processing algorithms in Rust more enjoyable than Julia, or faster for that matter.
IceSentry 3y ago
It's one of the thing that annoys me the most about these discussions. The best language to prototype in is the one you know the most. For me and probably for you too, that's rust. So it's trivial for me to start a new project and have everything I need very quickly. With pretty much any other languages I need to relearn some syntax or apis which is a massive waste of time when prototyping.
patrick451 3y ago
I'm not here do doubt your comfort in rust, but I do think that prototyping scientific software involves more than just iterating on code. Personally, my development process of is just different for that kind of code because it's easier and faster to debug through plots than traditional logging/breakpoints/whatever. Personally, I feel more proficient in c++ than python, but I will still prototype in python. Half the reason for this is that I can set a breakpoint anywhere in program, and produce an interactive plot in about 3 seconds. Julia has a similar advantage here. Maybe there are tricks I don't know, but it's a massive pain to do this in languages like rust and c++.

isatty 3y ago

Exactly. There is no need to shoehorn rust into absolutely everything. Right tools for the job.