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I really want to be able to use Rust, but then I keep seeing changes that seem to go around and around in circles. I do appreciate that it's very very hard to g

by Pacabel 13y ago

I really want to be able to use Rust, but then I keep seeing changes that seem to go around and around in circles. I do appreciate that it's very very hard to get things right the first time around and I understand that some experimentation is necessary. But when it comes to Rust it seems like one approach is deemed the correct way, then it's built and used, and like most things it has flaws. Then the complete opposite approach is tried but it runs into a different set of flaws, usually the ones that caused the other approach to be chosen in the first place. The Rust home page describes it as a "practical language" but with all of these back and forth changes it is really really difficult to actually use it. I don't know if I can keep waiting for it. When I've got new code to write I'm just going to have to use a language that I know I can depend on for more than a month or two, like Go or Haskell or Ruby. - Pacabel

dbaupp 13y ago
Which back and forth changes are you referring to? (Also, yeah, Rust is pre-release and is definitely not suitable for people who don't like making minor changes regularly if they're tracking master (or less minor changes occasionally if tracking the 0.x releases).)
Daishiman 13y ago
Rust is pre-alpha; it's as green as it can be, and it is first and foremost (for the moment) a PL research project. You should not be using it in production, or expecting things to not break between releases. That said, breaking changes are becoming less and less common. The language syntax has been mostly stabilized and most changes are going into corner cases and managing modularity, and much of the possible experimentation has been fenced to the post-1.0 release.
exDM69 13y ago
I see the changes in Rust as a positive, not a negative thing. I do understand that it may become a burden for a Rust programmer and is a major hindrance if you'd actually want to go to production with it. But even this fairly major change should not break a lot of existing Rust code. But this allows Rust to do bleeding edge research instead of finalizing on a strict specification before knowing if the design will work in practice. It is also very refreshing to see programmers admit that their choice was wrong and not insisting on staying with a bad choice that was made earlier. Consider Rust to be a practical research project, at least for now.

by Pacabel 13y ago

dbaupp 13y ago

Which back and forth changes are you referring to? (Also, yeah, Rust is pre-release and is definitely not suitable for people who don't like making minor changes regularly if they're tracking master (or less minor changes occasionally if tracking the 0.x releases).)

Daishiman 13y ago

Rust is pre-alpha; it's as green as it can be, and it is first and foremost (for the moment) a PL research project. You should not be using it in production, or expecting things to not break between releases. That said, breaking changes are becoming less and less common. The language syntax has been mostly stabilized and most changes are going into corner cases and managing modularity, and much of the possible experimentation has been fenced to the post-1.0 release.

exDM69 13y ago

I see the changes in Rust as a positive, not a negative thing. I do understand that it may become a burden for a Rust programmer and is a major hindrance if you'd actually want to go to production with it. But even this fairly major change should not break a lot of existing Rust code. But this allows Rust to do bleeding edge research instead of finalizing on a strict specification before knowing if the design will work in practice. It is also very refreshing to see programmers admit that their choice was wrong and not insisting on staying with a bad choice that was made earlier. Consider Rust to be a practical research project, at least for now.