5 ms·

So strange reading all the comments here saying that Rust is not a language for "lazy developers". I'm an incredibly lazy developer and Rust only makes me lazi

by bsnnkv 2y ago

So strange reading all the comments here saying that Rust is not a language for "lazy developers". I'm an incredibly lazy developer and Rust only makes me lazier. I can pretty much turn off the part of my brain that deals with "programming language" stuff and put all that energy towards the part of my brain that deals with "building stuff" whenever I write code in Rust, because I have a high level of confidence that the language itself isn't trying to make me shoot myself in the foot at every turn. Rust is the only language where I can open something like Notepad without an LSP or highlighting, write code for an hour without testing or compiling, and then run clippy a few times to see and make the suggested fixes. It doesn't get any lazier than that. On the web framework topic: Rocket is the greatest "lazy developer" web framework I've ever used.

chowells 2y ago
Some people are comfortable offloading mental effort to a compiler. Others suffer from anxiety at the suggestion.
- bsnnkv 2y ago
  I'm the other way around I guess - a lot of anxiety when I'm forced to touch fragile bits written in Ruby, Python and JS at work. Part of it might be the terrible tooling story in each of those language ecosystems as well. Last week I deployed a Ruby change where a missed comma between two strings in an array did not get picked up by any of the automated tooling or by 3 other team members who code reviewed my change, and ended up cutting 50+ sev2s at 10pm. AWS folks can probably guess which internal tool I had to touch that requires Ruby. (I was on call, fun times)
  - x3n0ph3n3 2y ago
    > Rust is the only language where I can open something like Notepad without an LSP or highlighting, write code for an hour without testing or compiling, and then run clippy a few times to see and make the suggested fixes. > anxiety when I'm forced to touch fragile bits written in Ruby Wild, because the first sentiment is exactly how I feel about Ruby.
    - bsnnkv 2y ago
      Together we would be unstoppable :)
  - wonrax 2y ago
    > I feel a lot of anxiety when I'm forced to touch fragile bits written in Ruby, Python, and JS. I resonate with you even with TypeScript, since it's just annotating types but not the true value under the variable. You would have to go to a greater extent to make sure that everything from outside (library code, parsing HTTP responses, database queries, etc.) conforms to your annotated types. Even in the same project code created by other people, I often doubt the validity of the types, asking myself questions like: Should I validate this? What if this has already been validated, thus making mine a performance waste? Does this object contain extra sensitive information that could be leaked when used in a logger? After having experience with Rust, working with TS feels like navigating a minefield where every refactor could detonate hidden bugs or behavior collectively accumulated by all the historic code and dependencies, small or large.
    - throwaway173920 2y ago
      I haven't had this experience with TypeScript. In the projects I've worked with, we turn on strict mode and heavily discourage using `any`. I generally feel pretty confident that the type annotations match the runtime values.
throw10920 2y ago
> I'm an incredibly lazy developer and Rust only makes me lazier You can't be that lazy, or you would use a language that doesn't force you to do memory management. > Rust is the only language where I can open something like Notepad without an LSP or highlighting This is a very weird and arbitrary qualifier that seems designed to filter out other languages with type systems.
- bsnnkv 2y ago
  > force you to do memory management This is not my experience at all. I never think about memory management when I'm writing Rust, let alone am I "doing it" (active voice). Your second comment is a very weird sentence that is very difficult for me to grok.
  - throw10920 2y ago
    > I never think about memory management when I'm writing Rust, let alone am I "doing it" (active voice). Worrying about lifetimes is memory management that is unnecessary with GC languages and directly increases cognitive load. My second paragraph is pointing out that "where I can open something like Notepad without an LSP or highlighting" is a strange qualifier. Why does it matter if you don't have semantic analysis in your editor? You certainly didn't explain it.
    - bsnnkv 2y ago
      > Worrying about lifetimes Again, not my experience at all. I simply don't think about any of that stuff when I write Rust, all my mental energy can safely go towards working on whatever I'm building. If you don't believe me, you're welcome to watch the literally hundreds of hours of me live coding in Rust on YouTube.
      - throw10920 2y ago
        > Again, not my experience at all. I simply don't think about any of that stuff when I write Rust Your subjective perception is not reality. You have to think about it, or your programs will be incorrect. The mental load may be low to an experience Rust programmer, but it is there, and it's very intrusive to Rust beginners like myself. > If you don't believe me, you're welcome to watch the literally hundreds of hours of me live coding in Rust on YouTube. That's not relevant. Lack of external indicators of cognitive load does not mean that it's not happening.
zild3d 2y ago
> It doesn't get any lazier than that. Uhh have you tried Cursor compose?
lvl155 2y ago
I agree with this 100%. Rust is the most effective language for the “laziest” of developers.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

by bsnnkv 2y ago

chowells 2y ago

Some people are comfortable offloading mental effort to a compiler. Others suffer from anxiety at the suggestion.

bsnnkv 2y ago
I'm the other way around I guess - a lot of anxiety when I'm forced to touch fragile bits written in Ruby, Python and JS at work. Part of it might be the terrible tooling story in each of those language ecosystems as well. Last week I deployed a Ruby change where a missed comma between two strings in an array did not get picked up by any of the automated tooling or by 3 other team members who code reviewed my change, and ended up cutting 50+ sev2s at 10pm. AWS folks can probably guess which internal tool I had to touch that requires Ruby. (I was on call, fun times)
- x3n0ph3n3 2y ago
  > Rust is the only language where I can open something like Notepad without an LSP or highlighting, write code for an hour without testing or compiling, and then run clippy a few times to see and make the suggested fixes. > anxiety when I'm forced to touch fragile bits written in Ruby Wild, because the first sentiment is exactly how I feel about Ruby.
  - bsnnkv 2y ago
    Together we would be unstoppable :)
- wonrax 2y ago
  > I feel a lot of anxiety when I'm forced to touch fragile bits written in Ruby, Python, and JS. I resonate with you even with TypeScript, since it's just annotating types but not the true value under the variable. You would have to go to a greater extent to make sure that everything from outside (library code, parsing HTTP responses, database queries, etc.) conforms to your annotated types. Even in the same project code created by other people, I often doubt the validity of the types, asking myself questions like: Should I validate this? What if this has already been validated, thus making mine a performance waste? Does this object contain extra sensitive information that could be leaked when used in a logger? After having experience with Rust, working with TS feels like navigating a minefield where every refactor could detonate hidden bugs or behavior collectively accumulated by all the historic code and dependencies, small or large.
  - throwaway173920 2y ago
    I haven't had this experience with TypeScript. In the projects I've worked with, we turn on strict mode and heavily discourage using `any`. I generally feel pretty confident that the type annotations match the runtime values.

throw10920 2y ago

> I'm an incredibly lazy developer and Rust only makes me lazier You can't be that lazy, or you would use a language that doesn't force you to do memory management. > Rust is the only language where I can open something like Notepad without an LSP or highlighting This is a very weird and arbitrary qualifier that seems designed to filter out other languages with type systems.

bsnnkv 2y ago
> force you to do memory management This is not my experience at all. I never think about memory management when I'm writing Rust, let alone am I "doing it" (active voice). Your second comment is a very weird sentence that is very difficult for me to grok.
- throw10920 2y ago
  > I never think about memory management when I'm writing Rust, let alone am I "doing it" (active voice). Worrying about lifetimes is memory management that is unnecessary with GC languages and directly increases cognitive load. My second paragraph is pointing out that "where I can open something like Notepad without an LSP or highlighting" is a strange qualifier. Why does it matter if you don't have semantic analysis in your editor? You certainly didn't explain it.
  - bsnnkv 2y ago
    > Worrying about lifetimes Again, not my experience at all. I simply don't think about any of that stuff when I write Rust, all my mental energy can safely go towards working on whatever I'm building. If you don't believe me, you're welcome to watch the literally hundreds of hours of me live coding in Rust on YouTube.
    - throw10920 2y ago
      > Again, not my experience at all. I simply don't think about any of that stuff when I write Rust Your subjective perception is not reality. You have to think about it, or your programs will be incorrect. The mental load may be low to an experience Rust programmer, but it is there, and it's very intrusive to Rust beginners like myself. > If you don't believe me, you're welcome to watch the literally hundreds of hours of me live coding in Rust on YouTube. That's not relevant. Lack of external indicators of cognitive load does not mean that it's not happening.

zild3d 2y ago

> It doesn't get any lazier than that. Uhh have you tried Cursor compose?

lvl155 2y ago

I agree with this 100%. Rust is the most effective language for the “laziest” of developers.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]