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That's funny, because I started hacking Rust just because the `~` sigil and friends were gone. :-) Before that, so many sigils in Rust scared me and kept me fr

by barosl 11y ago

That's funny, because I started hacking Rust just because the `~` sigil and friends were gone. :-) Before that, so many sigils in Rust scared me and kept me from learning it. Rust still has a bit many sigils nowadays, but it's definitely cleaner than before!

drbawb 11y ago
>so many sigils in Rust scared me and kept me from learning it. I had just started seriously learning rust a few months before they started moving owned pointers into `std`. So I felt somewhat betrayed by the removal of the sigils. It seemed like all the hard work I had spent learning the various pointer types would end up being useless! Of course that fear was ungrounded. I very quickly came to understand that what I had actually spent time learning was ownership; and _that knowledge_ is still perfectly relevant, even today in rust 1.0. All that was really changing was the removal of some arcane syntax which had only served as a stumbling block in my quest to learn Rust.
- sho_hn 11y ago
  > It seemed like all the hard work I had spent learning the various pointer types would end up being useless! I always joke about this being "programmer Stockholm syndrome": When you've mastered something that's actually not good at all, don't want that time and effort to have been for nothing, and become a champion for crap. It happens a lot and usually unintentionally - the champion feels genuine joy about the intricacies of what they're pushing and just wants to share it with others. You can see this happening a lot around poorly thought-through and/or overly complex technologies. This is why Rust's progressive trimming and slimming over the last 1-2 years has been really impressive and gratifying to watch - it really takes a lot to reevaluate and let go. Critics will point out that Rust still is plenty complex, of course, and I think that's healthy skepticism too.
  - gbersac 11y ago
    When I hear Stockholm syndrom, I always think javascript and css ^^
    - oldmanjay 11y ago
      People hate me for this, but that's pretty much how I feel about emacs and vi
      - gbersac 11y ago
        So true ! I am a vim user from time to time, and the only advantage is it hurts my fingers less than sublime text.
JoshTriplett 11y ago
That was my reaction as well: not just the sigils, but in general Rust used to have a much larger language, and dropping the sigils was part of a shift towards having a much smaller language and larger library. That seems like a feature, not least of which because libraries can be improved and replaced.
lambda 11y ago
Yep, the dropping of the sigils was a big help in my actually giving the language a chance. It's been on my radar for a while, but went through a pretty ugly period for a while before coming out much better than before. There was also just a sense of "OK, I get what these things do, but when should I us an @ vs an ~ vs a & in my API", and now I feel like it's much more clear what you use the different reference types for.

by barosl 11y ago

drbawb 11y ago

>so many sigils in Rust scared me and kept me from learning it. I had just started seriously learning rust a few months before they started moving owned pointers into `std`. So I felt somewhat betrayed by the removal of the sigils. It seemed like all the hard work I had spent learning the various pointer types would end up being useless! Of course that fear was ungrounded. I very quickly came to understand that what I had actually spent time learning was ownership; and _that knowledge_ is still perfectly relevant, even today in rust 1.0. All that was really changing was the removal of some arcane syntax which had only served as a stumbling block in my quest to learn Rust.

sho_hn 11y ago
> It seemed like all the hard work I had spent learning the various pointer types would end up being useless! I always joke about this being "programmer Stockholm syndrome": When you've mastered something that's actually not good at all, don't want that time and effort to have been for nothing, and become a champion for crap. It happens a lot and usually unintentionally - the champion feels genuine joy about the intricacies of what they're pushing and just wants to share it with others. You can see this happening a lot around poorly thought-through and/or overly complex technologies. This is why Rust's progressive trimming and slimming over the last 1-2 years has been really impressive and gratifying to watch - it really takes a lot to reevaluate and let go. Critics will point out that Rust still is plenty complex, of course, and I think that's healthy skepticism too.
- gbersac 11y ago
  When I hear Stockholm syndrom, I always think javascript and css ^^
  - oldmanjay 11y ago
    People hate me for this, but that's pretty much how I feel about emacs and vi
    - gbersac 11y ago
      So true ! I am a vim user from time to time, and the only advantage is it hurts my fingers less than sublime text.

JoshTriplett 11y ago

That was my reaction as well: not just the sigils, but in general Rust used to have a much larger language, and dropping the sigils was part of a shift towards having a much smaller language and larger library. That seems like a feature, not least of which because libraries can be improved and replaced.

lambda 11y ago

Yep, the dropping of the sigils was a big help in my actually giving the language a chance. It's been on my radar for a while, but went through a pretty ugly period for a while before coming out much better than before. There was also just a sense of "OK, I get what these things do, but when should I us an @ vs an ~ vs a & in my API", and now I feel like it's much more clear what you use the different reference types for.