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I dont know rust but the following comment from the reddit thread resonates with me: So you started learning rust by trying to make something multithreaded tha

by msh 3y ago

I dont know rust but the following comment from the reddit thread resonates with me: So you started learning rust by trying to make something multithreaded that also interops with C instead of starting with something simpler so you can learn to understand the borrow checker? That's a recipe for disaster.

mikece 3y ago
The choice of language was forced on the dev. He did a Java version of the app -- ON HIS OWN TIME -- and management nixed it.
- imtringued 3y ago
  That doesn't excuse his choice of words. >am truly convinced that all the people who claim Rust is great are either lying to themselves or others A Rust novice telling every Rust developer in the world being wrong? There must be some irrefutable wisdom in there somewhere!
- rob74 3y ago
  Yeah - there's a huge psychological difference between adopting a language out of your own free will and it being forced upon you. I suspect that's where a lot of the current hyperbole about Rust comes from...
gizmo 3y ago
The issue here is that Rust presents itself as a systems language, i.e. a language where the programmer has control over how the system's resources get used. However, Rust has safety mechanisms that will stop you from doing what you want, even when what you want to do is safe and sensible. There is a contradiction here that Rust enthusiasts endlessly make excuses for. Rust is more like Go than C. Both Rust and Go can be used to write high performance services. Both Rust and Go have many modern convenience features. And both languages expect you to write code in a specific idiomatic way, wrt borrow checking and go channels respectively. If you need shared memory and fine-grained locking for performance you're not going to have a good time. And that makes Go and Rust unsuitable for a large chunk of applications.
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  This is simply false. Having written code like what you're talking about... There is always an escape-hatch. Rust just wants to make sure you really know what you're doing before letting you go there. The idea being to provide safety-minded well crafted but performant libraries where the hard thinking about atomics & locking and unsafe-bounded memory shenanigans are confined in well-tested locales. Also don't see why you're comparing with Go. Entirely different bowl of soup. Go is not a systems programming language.
- goku12 3y ago
  Rust is used for writing entire OS (e.g Redox) or parts of the OS that needs precise management of resources (e.g Linux kernel, Windows). It is used to write parts of web browsers (servo and quantum parts of firefox), game engines and in embedded systems. It's used everywhere that traditionally used C, C++ or Ada. There really isn't a justification to dismiss Rust as a systems programming language. The limitations that you claim are not there. The reasons are there in the other reply to you.
- mike_hearn 3y ago
  There is unsafe{} if you want to do something not normally allowed. But, well, it's unsafe. I was surprised to learn of a memory management vulnerability in a Rust serialization library the other day (for capn'proto). It was using unsafe. You'd think that serialization is the sort of library where Rust's guarantees are most valuable.

by msh 3y ago

mikece 3y ago

The choice of language was forced on the dev. He did a Java version of the app -- ON HIS OWN TIME -- and management nixed it.

imtringued 3y ago
That doesn't excuse his choice of words. >am truly convinced that all the people who claim Rust is great are either lying to themselves or others A Rust novice telling every Rust developer in the world being wrong? There must be some irrefutable wisdom in there somewhere!
rob74 3y ago
Yeah - there's a huge psychological difference between adopting a language out of your own free will and it being forced upon you. I suspect that's where a lot of the current hyperbole about Rust comes from...

gizmo 3y ago

The issue here is that Rust presents itself as a systems language, i.e. a language where the programmer has control over how the system's resources get used. However, Rust has safety mechanisms that will stop you from doing what you want, even when what you want to do is safe and sensible. There is a contradiction here that Rust enthusiasts endlessly make excuses for. Rust is more like Go than C. Both Rust and Go can be used to write high performance services. Both Rust and Go have many modern convenience features. And both languages expect you to write code in a specific idiomatic way, wrt borrow checking and go channels respectively. If you need shared memory and fine-grained locking for performance you're not going to have a good time. And that makes Go and Rust unsuitable for a large chunk of applications.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago
This is simply false. Having written code like what you're talking about... There is always an escape-hatch. Rust just wants to make sure you really know what you're doing before letting you go there. The idea being to provide safety-minded well crafted but performant libraries where the hard thinking about atomics & locking and unsafe-bounded memory shenanigans are confined in well-tested locales. Also don't see why you're comparing with Go. Entirely different bowl of soup. Go is not a systems programming language.
goku12 3y ago
Rust is used for writing entire OS (e.g Redox) or parts of the OS that needs precise management of resources (e.g Linux kernel, Windows). It is used to write parts of web browsers (servo and quantum parts of firefox), game engines and in embedded systems. It's used everywhere that traditionally used C, C++ or Ada. There really isn't a justification to dismiss Rust as a systems programming language. The limitations that you claim are not there. The reasons are there in the other reply to you.
mike_hearn 3y ago
There is unsafe{} if you want to do something not normally allowed. But, well, it's unsafe. I was surprised to learn of a memory management vulnerability in a Rust serialization library the other day (for capn'proto). It was using unsafe. You'd think that serialization is the sort of library where Rust's guarantees are most valuable.