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I wonder if people are in a way misusing Rust by trying to use it to build everything. It's designed to be a systems language, one for writing OSes, drivers, co

by api 2y ago

I wonder if people are in a way misusing Rust by trying to use it to build everything. It's designed to be a systems language, one for writing OSes, drivers, core system services, low level parsers, network protocols, compilers, runtimes, etc. There's no way a low-level systems language like this is going to be quite as ergonomic as a higher level more abstract garbage collected language.

dapperdrake 2y ago
Luckily, neither CPython, nor Lua, nor Perl, nor PHP, nor Ruby, nor Google Chrome are written in C. Oh, wait.
hardwaresofton 2y ago
IMO you've stumbled into one of the reasons Rust is amazing -- it can go to higher levels, for many good reasons. Whether you should is another question, and it will arguably never be as easy to write as python or javascript (to be fair it's also easy to write inconsistent code in those languages), but it can. I wouldn't argue that Rust is as ergonomic as other languages, but it has enough pieces to build DSLs that make it look as ergonomic as other languages. An example of this is the front-end frameworks that have been spun in Rust, like Leptos[0]. Rust probably has no business being on the frontend, but the code snippets are convincing and look pretty reasonable. If the macro machinery and type stuff never blows up/forces you to touch internals, then does anyone care that it's a system language underneath? [0]: https://book.leptos.dev/view/01_basic_component.html https://book.leptos.dev/view/01_basic_component.html
- UncleEntity 2y ago
  > Rust probably has no business being on the frontend... I would argue it this were more common they would have a lot of incentive to iron out the rough spots. Well, hopefully not in the way that makes it easier to have you download a 100+ megabyte wasm bundle to read a static blogpost, but anyways. Personally, if I'm writing a script for an actual purpose (as opposed to just coding for coding's sake) I reach for python and if that's too slow I write a wrapper around some C code to speed things up. If I'm just messing around I use C(++) because that's what I know -- which is where rust could easily fit if the learning curve wasn't so high that I don't see the effort as worth it.

by api 2y ago

dapperdrake 2y ago

Luckily, neither CPython, nor Lua, nor Perl, nor PHP, nor Ruby, nor Google Chrome are written in C. Oh, wait.

hardwaresofton 2y ago

IMO you've stumbled into one of the reasons Rust is amazing -- it can go to higher levels, for many good reasons. Whether you should is another question, and it will arguably never be as easy to write as python or javascript (to be fair it's also easy to write inconsistent code in those languages), but it can. I wouldn't argue that Rust is as ergonomic as other languages, but it has enough pieces to build DSLs that make it look as ergonomic as other languages. An example of this is the front-end frameworks that have been spun in Rust, like Leptos[0]. Rust probably has no business being on the frontend, but the code snippets are convincing and look pretty reasonable. If the macro machinery and type stuff never blows up/forces you to touch internals, then does anyone care that it's a system language underneath? [0]: https://book.leptos.dev/view/01_basic_component.html https://book.leptos.dev/view/01_basic_component.html

UncleEntity 2y ago
> Rust probably has no business being on the frontend... I would argue it this were more common they would have a lot of incentive to iron out the rough spots. Well, hopefully not in the way that makes it easier to have you download a 100+ megabyte wasm bundle to read a static blogpost, but anyways. Personally, if I'm writing a script for an actual purpose (as opposed to just coding for coding's sake) I reach for python and if that's too slow I write a wrapper around some C code to speed things up. If I'm just messing around I use C(++) because that's what I know -- which is where rust could easily fit if the learning curve wasn't so high that I don't see the effort as worth it.