6 ms·

seems rust's biggest win was improving other languages toolchains and bringing increased productivity to those languages.

by dzonga 1y ago

retrocog 1y ago
Not a bad win so far, right? One hand washes the other and both wash the face.
ainiriand 1y ago
Do you really think that this is Rust's biggest win or are you just joking/trolling?
- IshKebab 1y ago
  To be fair it is pretty significant. Especially uv. I don't know anything about PHP's existing toolchain but I do know that Python's is a horrifying mess, and uv basically fixes it. It's a small thing in the Rust community but it's pretty huge in the world simply because there are so many Python developers (and also because of the extreme magnitude of improvement). Probably wouldn't have happened without Rust.
  - 3eb7988a1663 1y ago
    Thanks to Rust, there are heaps of next generation CLI utilities that have come onto the scene in the past decade. Cross platform by default, UTF8 aware, more likely to be multi-threaded, simple distribution, and most importantly - improving on some unfortunate legacy API decisions. Ripgrep, fd, tokei, Just, zellij, uv, and so forth. Porting languages has given the opportunity to remove some of the cruft decided on a whim in the 70s. None of these are world changing, but they do make life easier than the originals.
    - johnisgood 1y ago
      Why is it "thanks to Rust"? They could have been written in any language.
      - Aeolos 1y ago
        Yet they were not - why is that?
        johnisgood 1y ago
        Why are you asking me back? I wonder why, too. Now, you can give me a reply for why you think that is, which you could have done without this comment, or you can just keep adding noise to this thread. Up to you.
      - 3eb7988a1663 1y ago
        To replace a historical C tool, you cannot compromise too much on the original constraints. Replacement has to be equivalently fast and no runtime. Which means even if you made a great design in C#/Java/Python/whatever, that is going to be a deal breaker for some. Safety is (somehow) not a compelling enough argument vs battle-tested. Rust (or Go) are about the only popular languages around that can meet the spec. That Rust will always be theoretically more performant than GC Go makes it the more attractive option for re-imagining some of these bedrock utilities.
        johnisgood 1y ago
        There are actually quite a few viable alternatives to Rust for building these fast toolchains, such as Zig, Odin, OxCaml, and Ada. Granted, not all of them are popular, but that is how Rust started off, too, right? --- Ada would have been great as it is quite mature and used for serious and critical software, but lacks the "cool factor" that Rust has. I would like to add, that there is clearly a disconnect between technical merit and adoption. Ada is a perfect example of this. It has been around since the 1980s with: * Stronger safety guarantees than Rust in many ways (stricter type system, built-in contracts, formal verification support) * Proven track record in safety-critical systems (aerospace, defense, medical devices) * Native compilation with no runtime overhead * Mature toolchain and decades of real-world deployment * ... and much more. If safety was truly the driving factor, Ada should have dominated systems programming decades ago. But it didn't, and that reveals what's really going on. I believe that Rust was chosen over Ada because of: * Timing - arrived when web developers were ready to try systems programming * Community building - excellent documentation, welcoming culture, modern package manager[1] * Aesthetic appeal - syntax familiar to C/Java/JavaScript developers * Marketing narrative - "systems programming without fear", i.e. fuckton of hype Ada had superior safety for decades but lacked the cultural momentum. It was associated with DoD contracts and enterprise software, not cool indie CLI tools. [1] Ada has Alire now as its modern package manager.
- testdelacc1 1y ago
  Not the biggest, but definitely the most visible to people who aren’t dialled into Rust news. For example, many people use Android but they wouldn’t know or need to know that their Bluetooth stack is written in Rust. Whereas anyone who uses Python would have heard of uv and why it’s much faster than other tools.
- wavemode 1y ago
  I don't think it's strange at all to call this Rust's biggest win. Adopting Rust-based tooling has sped up development and lowered CI costs for millions of JavaScript and Python developers. I can't think of anything else Rust has been used for which has had a larger direct impact on people's everyday lives.
smt88 1y ago
You're wrong because it's also incrementally replacing individual, high-risk components in Windows and Linux. But even if you're not wrong, a major mission of Rust was to be a safer C/C++, and language tooling used to be dominated by those languages.
- tredre3 1y ago
  All the language tools that are being displaced by newer rust replacements were definitely not written in C/C++. They were/are written in the host language (js/java/python/php/ruby).
  - tialaramex 1y ago
    Which is striking right? Nobody went "Oh, I should write C++ to speed up my Python tool", or if they did we don't know about it because they're still trying to understand the six thousand lines of template spaghetti their compiler spat out due to a typo in one line of their code.
giancarlostoro 1y ago
I am waiting for someone to build a modern scripting language in Rust that has the popularity and rich tooling and capabilities of Rust as a result.
- testdelacc1 1y ago
  Like Gleam?
  - scotty79 1y ago
    It doesn't have imperative constructs I think. So half of developers or more are out front the get go.
  - giancarlostoro 1y ago
    I was thinking similar but more like a Python or Lua but all in Rust.
- ekidd 1y ago
  There are two deep capabilities that make Rust, Rust: 1. Banning shared, mutable data. You can't change data that other code might be reading. This is a huge win for threading and multiple CPUs, but it's a dramatic departure from other popular languages. 2. Knowing how data is laid out in memory. This is classic "systems programming" stuff, and it's also present in C, C++, Zed, etc. This usually goes along with making memory allocation visible (though not always in C++). This is a big win for performance. If you wanted to build a "scripting language" version of Rust, you could probably lose (2). Languages like Haskell are even stricter than Rust, but they hide the details of memory layout. But then you need to decide whether to keep or lose (1). If you keep it, your language will have good threading, but users will need to think about ownership and borrowing. If you lose (1), then your language won't feel very much like Rust. It would be an interesting intellectual exercise! But actually turning it into a popular scripting language would probably require the same luck and the same 10 years of work that most successful languages need to get real traction.
  - coolsunglasses 1y ago

seems rust's biggest win was improving other languages toolchains and bringing increased productivity to those languages.

by dzonga 1y ago

seems rust's biggest win was improving other languages toolchains and bringing increased productivity to those languages.

retrocog 1y ago

Not a bad win so far, right? One hand washes the other and both wash the face.

ainiriand 1y ago

Do you really think that this is Rust's biggest win or are you just joking/trolling?

IshKebab 1y ago
To be fair it is pretty significant. Especially uv. I don't know anything about PHP's existing toolchain but I do know that Python's is a horrifying mess, and uv basically fixes it. It's a small thing in the Rust community but it's pretty huge in the world simply because there are so many Python developers (and also because of the extreme magnitude of improvement). Probably wouldn't have happened without Rust.
- 3eb7988a1663 1y ago
  Thanks to Rust, there are heaps of next generation CLI utilities that have come onto the scene in the past decade. Cross platform by default, UTF8 aware, more likely to be multi-threaded, simple distribution, and most importantly - improving on some unfortunate legacy API decisions. Ripgrep, fd, tokei, Just, zellij, uv, and so forth. Porting languages has given the opportunity to remove some of the cruft decided on a whim in the 70s. None of these are world changing, but they do make life easier than the originals.
  - johnisgood 1y ago
    Why is it "thanks to Rust"? They could have been written in any language.
    - Aeolos 1y ago
      Yet they were not - why is that?
      - johnisgood 1y ago
        Why are you asking me back? I wonder why, too. Now, you can give me a reply for why you think that is, which you could have done without this comment, or you can just keep adding noise to this thread. Up to you.
    - 3eb7988a1663 1y ago
      To replace a historical C tool, you cannot compromise too much on the original constraints. Replacement has to be equivalently fast and no runtime. Which means even if you made a great design in C#/Java/Python/whatever, that is going to be a deal breaker for some. Safety is (somehow) not a compelling enough argument vs battle-tested. Rust (or Go) are about the only popular languages around that can meet the spec. That Rust will always be theoretically more performant than GC Go makes it the more attractive option for re-imagining some of these bedrock utilities.
      - johnisgood 1y ago
        There are actually quite a few viable alternatives to Rust for building these fast toolchains, such as Zig, Odin, OxCaml, and Ada. Granted, not all of them are popular, but that is how Rust started off, too, right? --- Ada would have been great as it is quite mature and used for serious and critical software, but lacks the "cool factor" that Rust has. I would like to add, that there is clearly a disconnect between technical merit and adoption. Ada is a perfect example of this. It has been around since the 1980s with: * Stronger safety guarantees than Rust in many ways (stricter type system, built-in contracts, formal verification support) * Proven track record in safety-critical systems (aerospace, defense, medical devices) * Native compilation with no runtime overhead * Mature toolchain and decades of real-world deployment * ... and much more. If safety was truly the driving factor, Ada should have dominated systems programming decades ago. But it didn't, and that reveals what's really going on. I believe that Rust was chosen over Ada because of: * Timing - arrived when web developers were ready to try systems programming * Community building - excellent documentation, welcoming culture, modern package manager[1] * Aesthetic appeal - syntax familiar to C/Java/JavaScript developers * Marketing narrative - "systems programming without fear", i.e. fuckton of hype Ada had superior safety for decades but lacked the cultural momentum. It was associated with DoD contracts and enterprise software, not cool indie CLI tools. [1] Ada has Alire now as its modern package manager.
testdelacc1 1y ago
Not the biggest, but definitely the most visible to people who aren’t dialled into Rust news. For example, many people use Android but they wouldn’t know or need to know that their Bluetooth stack is written in Rust. Whereas anyone who uses Python would have heard of uv and why it’s much faster than other tools.
wavemode 1y ago
I don't think it's strange at all to call this Rust's biggest win. Adopting Rust-based tooling has sped up development and lowered CI costs for millions of JavaScript and Python developers. I can't think of anything else Rust has been used for which has had a larger direct impact on people's everyday lives.

smt88 1y ago

You're wrong because it's also incrementally replacing individual, high-risk components in Windows and Linux. But even if you're not wrong, a major mission of Rust was to be a safer C/C++, and language tooling used to be dominated by those languages.

tredre3 1y ago
All the language tools that are being displaced by newer rust replacements were definitely not written in C/C++. They were/are written in the host language (js/java/python/php/ruby).
- tialaramex 1y ago
  Which is striking right? Nobody went "Oh, I should write C++ to speed up my Python tool", or if they did we don't know about it because they're still trying to understand the six thousand lines of template spaghetti their compiler spat out due to a typo in one line of their code.

giancarlostoro 1y ago

I am waiting for someone to build a modern scripting language in Rust that has the popularity and rich tooling and capabilities of Rust as a result.

testdelacc1 1y ago
Like Gleam?
- scotty79 1y ago
  It doesn't have imperative constructs I think. So half of developers or more are out front the get go.
- giancarlostoro 1y ago
  I was thinking similar but more like a Python or Lua but all in Rust.
ekidd 1y ago
There are two deep capabilities that make Rust, Rust: 1. Banning shared, mutable data. You can't change data that other code might be reading. This is a huge win for threading and multiple CPUs, but it's a dramatic departure from other popular languages. 2. Knowing how data is laid out in memory. This is classic "systems programming" stuff, and it's also present in C, C++, Zed, etc. This usually goes along with making memory allocation visible (though not always in C++). This is a big win for performance. If you wanted to build a "scripting language" version of Rust, you could probably lose (2). Languages like Haskell are even stricter than Rust, but they hide the details of memory layout. But then you need to decide whether to keep or lose (1). If you keep it, your language will have good threading, but users will need to think about ownership and borrowing. If you lose (1), then your language won't feel very much like Rust. It would be an interesting intellectual exercise! But actually turning it into a popular scripting language would probably require the same luck and the same 10 years of work that most successful languages need to get real traction.
- coolsunglasses 1y ago