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My impression is that the JS guru crowd is made of cool kids and very sensitive to what’s in fashion this week - and that’s definitely Rust. Here on HN there i

My impression is that the JS guru crowd is made of cool kids and very sensitive to what’s in fashion this week - and that’s definitely Rust. Here on HN there is plenty of announces of new things “like X but in Rust” - even when X would be fine in Python or Bash.

whstl 2y ago
This is inflammatory and myopic. The reason Rust and Go tooling is getting popular is because they are appropriate for the job. C and C++ are riddled with footguns and non-ideal for this kind of tooling, Ruby and Python provide only disadvantages compared to current JS tools, Haskell and OCaml are good but too niche. And so on. And the reason Rust and Go are getting usage in WASM is because they have a good WASM story. They are static, compiled and born at the right time. Other than C and C++, they're the only ones that put the effort. The reason people are making projects in Rust and Go is because they are accessible to those people. For me both hit a sweet spot that none of the languages above do.
- billfruit 2y ago
  Why not Java? Shouldn't it tick all the boxes? JVM is like the Cologne Cathedral of the software world.
  - OutOfHere 2y ago
    Isn't Java a memory hog and historically also exceedingly verbose?
  - nindalf 2y ago
    For a developer tool? Genuine question, how long does the JVM take to start? It used to be slow, but I don't know what it's like now. Check out the speed comparison of a few linters on this page -> https://astral.sh https://astral.sh. Would the JVM start before the fastest one finished? And supposing you took start time out of it, how long would an equivalent Java program take to run? Memory isn't as much of an issue, but all other things being equal users do prefer the program that consumes less memory.
    - kamma4434 2y ago
      Zero-ish now.
  - wiseowise 2y ago
    Performance and memory usage are worse than Rust/Go.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      Worse than Rust, yes, worse than Go, not really.
      - wiseowise 2y ago
        For CLI? Absolutely worse.
        pjmlp 2y ago
        A skillset problem, not knowing the ecosystem.
        wiseowise 2y ago
        Not really, with Go it’s braindead simple. Why would you want to jump through hoops to match performance of Go? For the sake of using Java (lol)?
        pjmlp 2y ago
        I rather use tools not stuck in jurassic time of programming language design, again, Go's performance is behind most Java implementations. That wouldn't be true for gccgo implementation, but then again, it is now abandoned in pre-generics Go, stuck at version 1.17, no one seems to care to update it.
        wiseowise 2y ago
        Then you use Rust. shrug
        pjmlp 2y ago
  - whstl 2y ago
    Others have answered but: Java had its chance and it was demonstrated time and time again that it is much better at other things. There is probably no language in existence that "ticks all the boxes". And this is good.
  - Eggpants 2y ago
    Oracle. It’s only a matter of time when its CEO decides he wants to buy another Hawaiian island and sics his army of lawyers after everyone using it.
- gizmo 2y ago
  C++ was also very popular and fashionable at some point. It also promised better type safety and better memory management than C. Now, 20 years later, it's easy see that C++ didn't deliver on all of its promises about better abstractions and object oriented productivity gains. RAII promised to make race conditions, memory leaks, and use-after-free bugs a thing of the past. The C++ hype was relentless and a very loud minority argued every C project should really adopt C++. Thankfully, a handful of grouchy naysayers stuck with C. Fashion and hype has always played a big role in software and our industry has at times unwisely abandoned good technology in favor of the 'New hotness'. We gyrate between local apps and cloud apps, thin and thick clients, static and dynamic typing, micro-services and monoliths, relational databases and keyval stores. Our industry is not very rational and the best tools don't always win. Marketing and market effects (winners keep winning) play a big role. Recognizing the role hype plays in our industry is not myopia.
  - whstl 2y ago
    I will keep calling it myopic and inflammatory, and I will add disrespectful to the list. The things people are shipping in Rust are stuff Rust is good for. As far as JS goes: mostly tooling. Notice how virtually nobody is shipping websites in Rust. Sure there's frameworks and async, but we're not there yet. The fact people are building libraries for servers, websites, gamedev, etc, in it is something that is required for experimentation. People don't deserve the disrespect shown here for exercising their curiosity and trying to advance the field.
    - rixed 2y ago
      I would not take the time to add my little voice to the ones that express their exasperation with rust, if not for the scornfull tone of your message. We all know that rust has a lot of merits, in that it is trying to establish a different, ambitious new trade off wrt. safety ganranties vs expressive power, and as a result is one a the few serious contender to replace C++ in the very areas where C++ is king, trading just a bit of performance for a vastly more sane language and better static garanties. But it is also fair to acknowledge that more often than not, in the many "old_thing but in rust" that are being posted on HN, the old_thing at hand does not actually fall in that very important but also very small subset of programs that can not tolerate automatic memory management. In other words, rust was not the good choice from a technical stand point. Maybe it's particularly obvious to me because I have tried to promote rust before it became cool? At that time my coleagues could only tolerate Python or Go. These days the same people probably program in rust (or are at least considering it), and that's not because rust improved that much, or because they have sudenly learned to use the right tool for the job.
- hot_gril 2y ago
  Well, Rust has a good WASM story, Golang doesn't.
Crisco 2y ago
I’m not sure if calling Rust “what’s in fashion this week” is accurate since it has been common for at least five years (if not longer) for posts that include “in Rust” to blow up on HN. It has been the Most Loved/Most Admired language on Stack Overflow’s developer survey for 9 years in a row. I know that’s a relatively short amount of time for a programming language, but to me it seems like it has some serious staying power.
lioeters 2y ago
Maybe, just maybe, some of these "kids" know what they're doing and are preferring Rust for legitimate reasons other than fashion - such as performence, memory safety, and type safety.
- hot_gril 2y ago
  Rust is legit for use cases typically served by C, C++, or maybe Java. I get more skeptical when someone's trying to shoehorn it into some other use case.
dcre 2y ago
This post is four years old!!!!!
hot_gril 2y ago
JS is an old and mainstream thing at this point, though.

whstl 2y ago

This is inflammatory and myopic. The reason Rust and Go tooling is getting popular is because they are appropriate for the job. C and C++ are riddled with footguns and non-ideal for this kind of tooling, Ruby and Python provide only disadvantages compared to current JS tools, Haskell and OCaml are good but too niche. And so on. And the reason Rust and Go are getting usage in WASM is because they have a good WASM story. They are static, compiled and born at the right time. Other than C and C++, they're the only ones that put the effort. The reason people are making projects in Rust and Go is because they are accessible to those people. For me both hit a sweet spot that none of the languages above do.

billfruit 2y ago
Why not Java? Shouldn't it tick all the boxes? JVM is like the Cologne Cathedral of the software world.
- OutOfHere 2y ago
  Isn't Java a memory hog and historically also exceedingly verbose?
- nindalf 2y ago
  For a developer tool? Genuine question, how long does the JVM take to start? It used to be slow, but I don't know what it's like now. Check out the speed comparison of a few linters on this page -> https://astral.sh https://astral.sh. Would the JVM start before the fastest one finished? And supposing you took start time out of it, how long would an equivalent Java program take to run? Memory isn't as much of an issue, but all other things being equal users do prefer the program that consumes less memory.
  - kamma4434 2y ago
    Zero-ish now.
- wiseowise 2y ago
  Performance and memory usage are worse than Rust/Go.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Worse than Rust, yes, worse than Go, not really.
    - wiseowise 2y ago
      For CLI? Absolutely worse.
      - pjmlp 2y ago
        A skillset problem, not knowing the ecosystem.
        wiseowise 2y ago
        Not really, with Go it’s braindead simple. Why would you want to jump through hoops to match performance of Go? For the sake of using Java (lol)?
        pjmlp 2y ago
        I rather use tools not stuck in jurassic time of programming language design, again, Go's performance is behind most Java implementations. That wouldn't be true for gccgo implementation, but then again, it is now abandoned in pre-generics Go, stuck at version 1.17, no one seems to care to update it.
        wiseowise 2y ago
        Then you use Rust. shrug
        pjmlp 2y ago
- whstl 2y ago
  Others have answered but: Java had its chance and it was demonstrated time and time again that it is much better at other things. There is probably no language in existence that "ticks all the boxes". And this is good.
- Eggpants 2y ago
  Oracle. It’s only a matter of time when its CEO decides he wants to buy another Hawaiian island and sics his army of lawyers after everyone using it.
gizmo 2y ago
C++ was also very popular and fashionable at some point. It also promised better type safety and better memory management than C. Now, 20 years later, it's easy see that C++ didn't deliver on all of its promises about better abstractions and object oriented productivity gains. RAII promised to make race conditions, memory leaks, and use-after-free bugs a thing of the past. The C++ hype was relentless and a very loud minority argued every C project should really adopt C++. Thankfully, a handful of grouchy naysayers stuck with C. Fashion and hype has always played a big role in software and our industry has at times unwisely abandoned good technology in favor of the 'New hotness'. We gyrate between local apps and cloud apps, thin and thick clients, static and dynamic typing, micro-services and monoliths, relational databases and keyval stores. Our industry is not very rational and the best tools don't always win. Marketing and market effects (winners keep winning) play a big role. Recognizing the role hype plays in our industry is not myopia.
- whstl 2y ago
  I will keep calling it myopic and inflammatory, and I will add disrespectful to the list. The things people are shipping in Rust are stuff Rust is good for. As far as JS goes: mostly tooling. Notice how virtually nobody is shipping websites in Rust. Sure there's frameworks and async, but we're not there yet. The fact people are building libraries for servers, websites, gamedev, etc, in it is something that is required for experimentation. People don't deserve the disrespect shown here for exercising their curiosity and trying to advance the field.
  - rixed 2y ago
    I would not take the time to add my little voice to the ones that express their exasperation with rust, if not for the scornfull tone of your message. We all know that rust has a lot of merits, in that it is trying to establish a different, ambitious new trade off wrt. safety ganranties vs expressive power, and as a result is one a the few serious contender to replace C++ in the very areas where C++ is king, trading just a bit of performance for a vastly more sane language and better static garanties. But it is also fair to acknowledge that more often than not, in the many "old_thing but in rust" that are being posted on HN, the old_thing at hand does not actually fall in that very important but also very small subset of programs that can not tolerate automatic memory management. In other words, rust was not the good choice from a technical stand point. Maybe it's particularly obvious to me because I have tried to promote rust before it became cool? At that time my coleagues could only tolerate Python or Go. These days the same people probably program in rust (or are at least considering it), and that's not because rust improved that much, or because they have sudenly learned to use the right tool for the job.
hot_gril 2y ago
Well, Rust has a good WASM story, Golang doesn't.

Crisco 2y ago

I’m not sure if calling Rust “what’s in fashion this week” is accurate since it has been common for at least five years (if not longer) for posts that include “in Rust” to blow up on HN. It has been the Most Loved/Most Admired language on Stack Overflow’s developer survey for 9 years in a row. I know that’s a relatively short amount of time for a programming language, but to me it seems like it has some serious staying power.

lioeters 2y ago

Maybe, just maybe, some of these "kids" know what they're doing and are preferring Rust for legitimate reasons other than fashion - such as performence, memory safety, and type safety.

hot_gril 2y ago
Rust is legit for use cases typically served by C, C++, or maybe Java. I get more skeptical when someone's trying to shoehorn it into some other use case.

dcre 2y ago

This post is four years old!!!!!

hot_gril 2y ago

JS is an old and mainstream thing at this point, though.