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“It’s written in Rust” Actual LOL. Indeed. I was working for a large corporation at one point and a development team was explaining their product. I asked what

“It’s written in Rust” Actual LOL. Indeed. I was working for a large corporation at one point and a development team was explaining their product. I asked what its differentiators were versus our competitors. The team replied that ours was written in Go. #faceplam

IshKebab 1y ago
That is a differentiator if your competitors are written in Python or Ruby or Bash or whatever. But yeah obviously for marketing to normal people you'd have to say "it's fast and reliable and easy to distribute" because they wouldn't know that these are properties of Go.
- account42 1y ago
  You can write slow unmaintainable brittle garbage in any language though. So even if your competition is literally written in Bash or whatever you should still say what your implementation actually does better - and if it's performance, back it up with something that lets me know you have actually measured the impact on real world use cases and are not just assuming "we wrote it in $language therefore it must be fast".
  - IshKebab 1y ago
    > You can write slow unmaintainable brittle garbage in any language though. Sure. You can drive really slowly in a sports car. But if you're looking for travel options for a long distance journey are you going to pick the sports car or the bicycle. Also I have actually yet to find slow unmaintainable brittle garbage written in Go or Rust. I'm sure it's possible but it's vastly less likely.
    - hulitu 1y ago
      > Also I have actually yet to find slow unmaintainable brittle garbage written in Go or Rust. I'm sure it's possible but it's vastly less likely. Citation needed. /s
- drob518 1y ago
  No. The differentiator is whatever benefits such an implementation might deliver (e.g., performance, reliability, etc.). Customers don’t start whipping out checkbooks when you say, “Ours is written in Go.”
  - maeln 1y ago
    That is what the post you responding to is saying
    - drob518 1y ago
      I’m still responding to the first sentence. It’s not a differentiator, even to smart engineers who understand the programming language in question (e.g., Go or Rust). Whenever an engineer leads with the programming language, I know that it’s just their favorite. You can write great Python, Ruby, Go or Rust, or you can write crappy Python, Ruby, Go, or Rust. Yes, some languages make more sense for certain environments (probably don’t want to do kernel programming in Ruby, for instance), but the programming language is never the differentiator itself. It’s what you make happen with it.
      - IshKebab 1y ago
        > You can write great Python, Ruby, Go or Rust, or you can write crappy Python, Ruby, Go, or Rust. ... the programming language is never the differentiator itself This is called "the fallacy of grey". Very common. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLJv2CoRCgeC2mPgj/the-fallacy-of-gray https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLJv2CoRCgeC2mPgj/the-fallac...
      - tracker1 1y ago
        TypeScript is the one true language that will bind them all in servitude.
demetris 1y ago
The Rust rewrites can become tiresome, they have become a meme at this point, but there are really good tools there too. An example from my personal experience: I used to think that oxipng was just a faster optipng. I took a closer look recently and saw that it is more than that. See: https://op111.net/posts/2025/09/png-compression-oxipng-optipng-fileoptimizer-cwebp/ https://op111.net/posts/2025/09/png-compression-oxipng-optip...
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
  If a new tool has actual performance or feature advantages, then that's the answer to "what problem does it solve", regardless of what language it's in.
  - drob518 1y ago
    Bingo.
- hulitu 1y ago
  > but there are really good tools there too. That's the problem. How good they are ? Who can tell ? The basic UNIX tools didn't come in "one day" like most of these "rust tools".

IshKebab 1y ago

That is a differentiator if your competitors are written in Python or Ruby or Bash or whatever. But yeah obviously for marketing to normal people you'd have to say "it's fast and reliable and easy to distribute" because they wouldn't know that these are properties of Go.

account42 1y ago
You can write slow unmaintainable brittle garbage in any language though. So even if your competition is literally written in Bash or whatever you should still say what your implementation actually does better - and if it's performance, back it up with something that lets me know you have actually measured the impact on real world use cases and are not just assuming "we wrote it in $language therefore it must be fast".
- IshKebab 1y ago
  > You can write slow unmaintainable brittle garbage in any language though. Sure. You can drive really slowly in a sports car. But if you're looking for travel options for a long distance journey are you going to pick the sports car or the bicycle. Also I have actually yet to find slow unmaintainable brittle garbage written in Go or Rust. I'm sure it's possible but it's vastly less likely.
  - hulitu 1y ago
    > Also I have actually yet to find slow unmaintainable brittle garbage written in Go or Rust. I'm sure it's possible but it's vastly less likely. Citation needed. /s
drob518 1y ago
No. The differentiator is whatever benefits such an implementation might deliver (e.g., performance, reliability, etc.). Customers don’t start whipping out checkbooks when you say, “Ours is written in Go.”
- maeln 1y ago
  That is what the post you responding to is saying
  - drob518 1y ago
    I’m still responding to the first sentence. It’s not a differentiator, even to smart engineers who understand the programming language in question (e.g., Go or Rust). Whenever an engineer leads with the programming language, I know that it’s just their favorite. You can write great Python, Ruby, Go or Rust, or you can write crappy Python, Ruby, Go, or Rust. Yes, some languages make more sense for certain environments (probably don’t want to do kernel programming in Ruby, for instance), but the programming language is never the differentiator itself. It’s what you make happen with it.
    - IshKebab 1y ago
      > You can write great Python, Ruby, Go or Rust, or you can write crappy Python, Ruby, Go, or Rust. ... the programming language is never the differentiator itself This is called "the fallacy of grey". Very common. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLJv2CoRCgeC2mPgj/the-fallacy-of-gray https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLJv2CoRCgeC2mPgj/the-fallac...
    - tracker1 1y ago
      TypeScript is the one true language that will bind them all in servitude.

demetris 1y ago

The Rust rewrites can become tiresome, they have become a meme at this point, but there are really good tools there too. An example from my personal experience: I used to think that oxipng was just a faster optipng. I took a closer look recently and saw that it is more than that. See: https://op111.net/posts/2025/09/png-compression-oxipng-optipng-fileoptimizer-cwebp/ https://op111.net/posts/2025/09/png-compression-oxipng-optip...

yjftsjthsd-h 1y ago
If a new tool has actual performance or feature advantages, then that's the answer to "what problem does it solve", regardless of what language it's in.
- drob518 1y ago
  Bingo.
hulitu 1y ago
> but there are really good tools there too. That's the problem. How good they are ? Who can tell ? The basic UNIX tools didn't come in "one day" like most of these "rust tools".