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I wonder if it could be a new manifestation of the long living problem of older resources appearing linked from random blogs or surfaced in web searches. I have

I wonder if it could be a new manifestation of the long living problem of older resources appearing linked from random blogs or surfaced in web searches. I haven't seen that problem in a while, but could be one explanation for that.

steveklabnik 3y ago
Possibly, yeah. I haven't heard of that in a very long time either, but even then, if they were following the same code as on that resource, in theory it should have worked? The current version of the book uses [dependencies] rand = "0.8.5" 1.31.0 (the oldest I could find with the same URL, I don't remember when exactly the book shipped so maybe it's slightly off but whatever) uses [dependencies] rand = "0.3.14" So yeah that's a lot of differences. But if they used the same code as the book, then it should have worked. So it's possible that: 1. they got an old resource but then used a newer version of rand, maybe by using `cargo add` instead? 2. rand had a breaking change somewhere along the way there, and they got unlucky Guess we'll never know...
- estebank 3y ago
  > instead of choosing a certain numbered version of the random library (if I remember correctly) I let cargo download the latest version which had a completely different API. Yeah, they didn't follow the instructions and got burned. I still think that multiple things went wrong simultaneously for that experience. I wonder if more prevalent uses of `#[doc(alias = "name")]` being leveraged by https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/120730 https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/120730 (which now that I check only accounts for methods and not functions, I should get on that!) so that when changing APIs around people at least get a slightly better experience.
  - steveklabnik 3y ago
    Ahhh nice catch. Yeah, I think that might help, but also, on some level, if people choose to not follow instructions, additional instructions don’t tend to help. Doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying in some circumstances, of course…

steveklabnik 3y ago

Possibly, yeah. I haven't heard of that in a very long time either, but even then, if they were following the same code as on that resource, in theory it should have worked? The current version of the book uses [dependencies] rand = "0.8.5" 1.31.0 (the oldest I could find with the same URL, I don't remember when exactly the book shipped so maybe it's slightly off but whatever) uses [dependencies] rand = "0.3.14" So yeah that's a lot of differences. But if they used the same code as the book, then it should have worked. So it's possible that: 1. they got an old resource but then used a newer version of rand, maybe by using `cargo add` instead? 2. rand had a breaking change somewhere along the way there, and they got unlucky Guess we'll never know...

estebank 3y ago
> instead of choosing a certain numbered version of the random library (if I remember correctly) I let cargo download the latest version which had a completely different API. Yeah, they didn't follow the instructions and got burned. I still think that multiple things went wrong simultaneously for that experience. I wonder if more prevalent uses of `#[doc(alias = "name")]` being leveraged by https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/120730 https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/120730 (which now that I check only accounts for methods and not functions, I should get on that!) so that when changing APIs around people at least get a slightly better experience.
- steveklabnik 3y ago
  Ahhh nice catch. Yeah, I think that might help, but also, on some level, if people choose to not follow instructions, additional instructions don’t tend to help. Doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying in some circumstances, of course…