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> It's been adopted for core components in Firefox, and Chromium/Android are likewise moving towards adopting Rust. In general, Rust has seen broad industry ado

by troad 2y ago

> It's been adopted for core components in Firefox, and Chromium/Android are likewise moving towards adopting Rust. In general, Rust has seen broad industry adoption from the likes of FAANG, M$, etc. Rust has seen slight interest, but saying that companies like Microsoft are 'moving towards adopting Rust' is just flat out wrong (you realise MS make their own language stack, right? and that it's far more used than Rust?). There's probably more ActionScript 3 in production at MS than Rust. On the nine year point, your assumption appears to be that Zig is trying to learn from Rust and is behind, but I'm not sure what you're basing this on. Zig isn't trying to do what Rust does, and has no reason to try to relive Rust's growing pains - instead, Zig is trying sand away the rougher edges of C. Zig is not chasing nine years of Rust, it's building on fifty years of C. Imho, the momentum isn't for moving to Rust, the momentum is for trying to bring memory safety to systems programming (as distinct from most other programming, where GC'd languages are already dominant). Personally, I quite like Rust, but these are early days, and it is not yet clear that Rust will be the language that wins this fight. The history of computing is littered with examples of the slightly less elegant but more practical tool triumphing over the pure but inflexible one.

masfoobar 2y ago
> I quite like Rust, but these are early days, and it is not yet clear that Rust will be the language that wins this fight There has been a number of languages in 20 years that have been given hype - some more than others... yet slowly disappear into the corner. Ruby and Clojure are 2 examples in the last 13 years. Today, I rarely hear about them (though I am sure they could still be popular in certain places) To me, Rust is different to these examples.. and more comparable to the sort of hype and popularity Java got back in the 90s. Point is Rust is not going away like these other examples... and the fact Microsoft has included Rust in their kernel (like Linux as and, I believe, BSD) tells you a lot. Microsoft are likely to still push their stack (.NET, etc) for frontend development. However, for their low-level+high performance codebase, likely behind their azure infrastructure, I would not be surprised if they start going with Rust. Personally, I would love to see languages like Odin and Zig be more popular but I think Rust is going to dominate many areas in programming. Does not mean Zig or Odin wont be successful, it just wont get that fanbase Rust has, imo. The question you have to ask (like Java) is -- is it really the best choice for its features... or by its push/popularity.
- troad 2y ago
  Really fine points. Rust definitely has more going for it than some of the earlier hype cycles. That being said, and speaking from my own experience with Rust, there are some design choices that I suspect may pose a barrier for its widespread adoption. Rewriting small discrete components while maintaining C interop is a very fine use case for Rust - building and maintaining a large, complex, and stateful system wholly in Rust is quite another. I'd be very, very surprised if Microsoft switched en masse to Rust for their bare metal stack, at least with Rust in its current shape. Clojure is a great parallel to bring up here, and should serve as a cautionary tale for Rust: Java was unpopular, Clojure showed that a better way was possible - but was itself just a bit too alien and hard to work with for many Java devs - so the more-familiar Kotlin swept in and carried the day. I have a sneaking suspicion that this might happen again, with C/C++ in the role of Java, Rust in the role of Clojure, and _ in the role of Kotlin. I don't quite know what the _ will be yet, but I suspect it will be a lot more accommodating to grizzled C wizards than Rust is. (I'm keeping an eye on Zig.)
  - masfoobar 2y ago
    Yeah I forgot to mention Kotlin. Yes, I am keeping an eye not just on Rust -- but Zig and Odin. I personally like Odin, but I don't think it will shake off its reputation as a gaming language (like Jai) -- but I hope they change that marketing strategy.
ParetoOptimal 2y ago
> but saying that companies like Microsoft are 'moving towards adopting Rust' is just flat out wrong Microsoft is making Rust a first-class system at Microsoft and investing 10 million dollars towards it apparently: https://twiiit.com/dwizzzleMSFT/status/1720134540822520268 https://twiiit.com/dwizzzleMSFT/status/1720134540822520268 (nitter) https://x.com/dwizzzleMSFT/status/1720134540822520268 https://x.com/dwizzzleMSFT/status/1720134540822520268 (twitter)

by troad 2y ago

masfoobar 2y ago

> I quite like Rust, but these are early days, and it is not yet clear that Rust will be the language that wins this fight There has been a number of languages in 20 years that have been given hype - some more than others... yet slowly disappear into the corner. Ruby and Clojure are 2 examples in the last 13 years. Today, I rarely hear about them (though I am sure they could still be popular in certain places) To me, Rust is different to these examples.. and more comparable to the sort of hype and popularity Java got back in the 90s. Point is Rust is not going away like these other examples... and the fact Microsoft has included Rust in their kernel (like Linux as and, I believe, BSD) tells you a lot. Microsoft are likely to still push their stack (.NET, etc) for frontend development. However, for their low-level+high performance codebase, likely behind their azure infrastructure, I would not be surprised if they start going with Rust. Personally, I would love to see languages like Odin and Zig be more popular but I think Rust is going to dominate many areas in programming. Does not mean Zig or Odin wont be successful, it just wont get that fanbase Rust has, imo. The question you have to ask (like Java) is -- is it really the best choice for its features... or by its push/popularity.

troad 2y ago
Really fine points. Rust definitely has more going for it than some of the earlier hype cycles. That being said, and speaking from my own experience with Rust, there are some design choices that I suspect may pose a barrier for its widespread adoption. Rewriting small discrete components while maintaining C interop is a very fine use case for Rust - building and maintaining a large, complex, and stateful system wholly in Rust is quite another. I'd be very, very surprised if Microsoft switched en masse to Rust for their bare metal stack, at least with Rust in its current shape. Clojure is a great parallel to bring up here, and should serve as a cautionary tale for Rust: Java was unpopular, Clojure showed that a better way was possible - but was itself just a bit too alien and hard to work with for many Java devs - so the more-familiar Kotlin swept in and carried the day. I have a sneaking suspicion that this might happen again, with C/C++ in the role of Java, Rust in the role of Clojure, and _ in the role of Kotlin. I don't quite know what the _ will be yet, but I suspect it will be a lot more accommodating to grizzled C wizards than Rust is. (I'm keeping an eye on Zig.)
- masfoobar 2y ago
  Yeah I forgot to mention Kotlin. Yes, I am keeping an eye not just on Rust -- but Zig and Odin. I personally like Odin, but I don't think it will shake off its reputation as a gaming language (like Jai) -- but I hope they change that marketing strategy.

ParetoOptimal 2y ago

> but saying that companies like Microsoft are 'moving towards adopting Rust' is just flat out wrong Microsoft is making Rust a first-class system at Microsoft and investing 10 million dollars towards it apparently: https://twiiit.com/dwizzzleMSFT/status/1720134540822520268 https://twiiit.com/dwizzzleMSFT/status/1720134540822520268 (nitter) https://x.com/dwizzzleMSFT/status/1720134540822520268 https://x.com/dwizzzleMSFT/status/1720134540822520268 (twitter)