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For an outsider, Rust is still barely usable. I tried building a simple demo using the beta release today, and regretted right away. Lots of "unstable feature"

by picardo 11y ago

For an outsider, Rust is still barely usable. I tried building a simple demo using the beta release today, and regretted right away. Lots of "unstable feature" errors that I can't figure out how to get rid of. Many useful features are unstable. I don't think I'm going to touch it again for a few months.

rdtsc 11y ago
Sorry you had a bad experience. Just curious, have you tried asking for help on /r/rust or irc? I find Rust community is pretty friendly and helpful.
tatterdemalion 11y ago
What was unstable that you wanted to use? (Not trying to deny your experience: reporting this helps the Rust team determine what to prioritize)
- picardo 11y ago
  Collections. I tried to set the flag to allow them. This used to work in the dev release I downloaded 2 months ago, but there is a new error that says unstable features are not allowed in the beta release and I cannot override an outer flag –– or something like that. At that point, I just gave up.
  - tatterdemalion 11y ago
    Most of the collections API is stable, & there may be a fairly simple alternative for the particular unstable feature you wanted to use. On the other hand, you could also download the nightly branch of Rust to be able to use all of the unstable features. I think the nature of the 1.0 release and the train model is not very easy to communicate: the Rust team hopes to commit strongly to semver, so "stable Rust" is only that which they are comfortable committing to providing backwards compatibility for indefinitely. It's really pretty fine to be on the nightly track if you don't mind occasionally having to change a method call or something when an unstable API you use change. Not trying to dismiss what you've said - I just think that the strength with which you expressed it ("Rust is still barely usable") was not accurate & that if you ask in the IRC channel or users.rust-lang.org, there is likely a no-or-little-hassle workaround for whatever feature you wanted.
    - picardo 11y ago
      I also qualified it by saying "for an outsider." If you're just trying to get up and running, small things can be a big deal. The feature I was trying to use used to work and then it stopped working all of a sudden when I upgraded today, which was frustrating. But I haven't given up on Rust, and that's why I was saying I'd try again in a few months. I'm going to try the IRC next time around.
      - tatterdemalion 11y ago
        Yeah transitioning from 0.12 to 1.0 when you're not super committed to the project is probably frustrating because of the stability shift. The easiest thing to do if you don't care about targeting stable Rust promptly with what you're doing is to install nightly instead of beta.
sjolsen 11y ago
I tried using Rust the other day, and I had the same problem. What I found indicated that "unstable" features are permanently disabled in all but the nightly releases.
- picardo 11y ago
  Ah, gotcha. Well, that was not clear to me.

by picardo 11y ago

rdtsc 11y ago

Sorry you had a bad experience. Just curious, have you tried asking for help on /r/rust or irc? I find Rust community is pretty friendly and helpful.

tatterdemalion 11y ago

What was unstable that you wanted to use? (Not trying to deny your experience: reporting this helps the Rust team determine what to prioritize)

picardo 11y ago
Collections. I tried to set the flag to allow them. This used to work in the dev release I downloaded 2 months ago, but there is a new error that says unstable features are not allowed in the beta release and I cannot override an outer flag –– or something like that. At that point, I just gave up.
- tatterdemalion 11y ago
  Most of the collections API is stable, & there may be a fairly simple alternative for the particular unstable feature you wanted to use. On the other hand, you could also download the nightly branch of Rust to be able to use all of the unstable features. I think the nature of the 1.0 release and the train model is not very easy to communicate: the Rust team hopes to commit strongly to semver, so "stable Rust" is only that which they are comfortable committing to providing backwards compatibility for indefinitely. It's really pretty fine to be on the nightly track if you don't mind occasionally having to change a method call or something when an unstable API you use change. Not trying to dismiss what you've said - I just think that the strength with which you expressed it ("Rust is still barely usable") was not accurate & that if you ask in the IRC channel or users.rust-lang.org, there is likely a no-or-little-hassle workaround for whatever feature you wanted.
  - picardo 11y ago
    I also qualified it by saying "for an outsider." If you're just trying to get up and running, small things can be a big deal. The feature I was trying to use used to work and then it stopped working all of a sudden when I upgraded today, which was frustrating. But I haven't given up on Rust, and that's why I was saying I'd try again in a few months. I'm going to try the IRC next time around.
    - tatterdemalion 11y ago
      Yeah transitioning from 0.12 to 1.0 when you're not super committed to the project is probably frustrating because of the stability shift. The easiest thing to do if you don't care about targeting stable Rust promptly with what you're doing is to install nightly instead of beta.

sjolsen 11y ago

I tried using Rust the other day, and I had the same problem. What I found indicated that "unstable" features are permanently disabled in all but the nightly releases.

picardo 11y ago
Ah, gotcha. Well, that was not clear to me.