4 ms·

> Supposing that it is worth it though, why not migrate to rust? I have a friend starting a startup / consultancy to do just that, and it makes more sense than

> Supposing that it is worth it though, why not migrate to rust? I have a friend starting a startup / consultancy to do just that, and it makes more sense than using circle. Even carbon says "if you can use rust, use rust not carbon" A key selling point for Circle is the “superset of C++” aspect. What you’re proposing—while feasible for startups—is entirely unreasonable for larger companies, especially those with existing [usually massive] C++ codebases. With enough evangelizing, you might get them to agree to start using something like Rust in new, smaller, and internal projects. However, suggesting a rewrite of anything mission-critical that can directly impact the bottom line to an entirely different language, ecosystem, behaviors, guarantees, community, etc. is one of the most scary proposals you can make to a company. Are the existing engineers proficient in this new language? How long will it take to ramp up? Are there any new costs (not just financial) to adopting this new language (hint: there always are)? Are there legal concerns? How long will the rewrite take (hint: likely longer than the engineers think)? The list goes on. It’s simply too risky a proposition.

wrsh07 2y ago
I don't believe your claim about migrating to rust being untenable. Primarily because I worked at Google where I've seen them migrate the codebase consistently through years of development and language updates. If an enormous company like Google can switch CPU architectures, change their numeric types, change out their hash maps, etc, then yes you can migrate to using a whole new language. (If Google thought this was impossible, why bother with carbon?) I say this confidently because I've worked directly with people doing this and seen their work. I will claim one better and say: you can migrate to idiomatic rust (with help from some custom libraries) Should companies do this? Depends on the industry and the needs for the kind of safety rust provides

wrsh07 2y ago

I don't believe your claim about migrating to rust being untenable. Primarily because I worked at Google where I've seen them migrate the codebase consistently through years of development and language updates. If an enormous company like Google can switch CPU architectures, change their numeric types, change out their hash maps, etc, then yes you can migrate to using a whole new language. (If Google thought this was impossible, why bother with carbon?) I say this confidently because I've worked directly with people doing this and seen their work. I will claim one better and say: you can migrate to idiomatic rust (with help from some custom libraries) Should companies do this? Depends on the industry and the needs for the kind of safety rust provides