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> In my experience, the fact that the compiler can check this stuff ends up subtracting cognitive load. Of any language I've used, Rust code is the code that I

by Dewie 12y ago

> In my experience, the fact that the compiler can check this stuff ends up subtracting cognitive load. Of any language I've used, Rust code is the code that I worry least about. That's interesting. So this holds for languages and applications where you could get away with not knowing the automatic memory management implementation and adjusting your design based on that? For example, that you don't have to worry yourself with making sure to not allocate too many values on the heap, at least in most of the code? Would you prefer using Rust for problems and domains where you strictly don't need the efficiency and determinism (like memory usage) you get from using Rust?

kibwen 12y ago
> Would you prefer using Rust for problems and domains > where you strictly don't need the efficiency and > determinism (like memory usage) you get from using Rust? It would highly depend on circumstance. How often is my code going to be run? How long will it be maintained for, and how often will it be updated, and by whom? I think we all have a hierarchy of sorts: bash or Perl for one-off, disposable scripting tasks; Python or some other light dynamic language for when things start getting more serious, but are still personal projects; C# or some other relatively heavyweight hammer for when we're writing code that will live beyond our control, maintained by others and run for years and years. I don't write production code in Rust yet (heavens no, not until 1.0 at least... godspeed to wycats :P ) but right now it's in that third category of languages where I trust that it can be maintained by a team and trusted to exist for years. However, I would consider Rust for that second category of somewhat-serious personal projects, because I know too well how such "personal projects" can vault unexpectedly into that third category of "mission-critical team projects". But before that, I'd need to wait for the library ecosystem to mature. EDIT: I should clarify too that resource management is only part of the reason why I don't worry about Rust code. There's also stuff like the ability to know that a given global variable is immutable, and can't be changed out from under me. Or knowing that an innocent-looking block of code can't unexpectedly kill the process (divide-by-zero notwithstanding).

by Dewie 12y ago

kibwen 12y ago

> Would you prefer using Rust for problems and domains > where you strictly don't need the efficiency and > determinism (like memory usage) you get from using Rust? It would highly depend on circumstance. How often is my code going to be run? How long will it be maintained for, and how often will it be updated, and by whom? I think we all have a hierarchy of sorts: bash or Perl for one-off, disposable scripting tasks; Python or some other light dynamic language for when things start getting more serious, but are still personal projects; C# or some other relatively heavyweight hammer for when we're writing code that will live beyond our control, maintained by others and run for years and years. I don't write production code in Rust yet (heavens no, not until 1.0 at least... godspeed to wycats :P ) but right now it's in that third category of languages where I trust that it can be maintained by a team and trusted to exist for years. However, I would consider Rust for that second category of somewhat-serious personal projects, because I know too well how such "personal projects" can vault unexpectedly into that third category of "mission-critical team projects". But before that, I'd need to wait for the library ecosystem to mature. EDIT: I should clarify too that resource management is only part of the reason why I don't worry about Rust code. There's also stuff like the ability to know that a given global variable is immutable, and can't be changed out from under me. Or knowing that an innocent-looking block of code can't unexpectedly kill the process (divide-by-zero notwithstanding).