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Rust's not there yet and I wonder if it can compete. The thing is it is too specialized and low level (not that it is a bad thing for what it is intended for).

Rust's not there yet and I wonder if it can compete. The thing is it is too specialized and low level (not that it is a bad thing for what it is intended for). The problem with all of the low-level things is that they are seriously undervalued. I am glad that there is servo but we need something like an operating system (IoT might work for the start). I hope Samsung changes its plans with Tizen and eventually will develop something with Rust in mind.

kibwen 11y ago
I wouldn't be worried about Rust competing, just because HN revolves around web tech doesn't mean the rest of the world undervalues systems programming. :)
- honest_joe 11y ago
  I meant financially undervalued by companies. Yes you have some players here and there but overall the market is not that big. And an investment to this area from a developer's POV is too much of a risk. Also the learning curve is too steep. Web tech is just the simplest way to reach the end user. Mobile apps or desktop apps are becoming a hassle as well. It just takes time to "install" something and use it. I hope thing change but I am skeptical.
  - kibwen 11y ago
    I think you yourself underestimate how big the market is here. :) One of my tasks for the past few weeks has been to get in touch with companies using Rust, and whereas I expected to be talking to nothing but early-stage startups, to my surprise there are some biiiig companies out there using Rust. People in more conservative environments are only just picking it up now that 1.0 is here, expect many more announcements as to who is using Rust to emerge in the next 6 - 12 months.
    - alimbada 11y ago
      Can you give more detail? Which companies and/or where are they based?
      - kibwen 11y ago
        I'm not at liberty to say which companies are using Rust without asking their permission, but one enormous company that's been publicly open about their usage of Rust is Dropbox. To avoid divulging anything myself, I'll just link to what they've posted elsewhere: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/374mre/we_just_switched_from_rust_to_nim_for_a_very/crk48jw https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/374mre/we_just... https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/2xvtll/getting_acquainted_with_mio/cp5tfa4?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/2xvtll/getting_acquai... https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/387ucr/question_are_established_c_or_c_projects/crtep1l?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/387ucr/question_are_e... Having met them for lunch a few weeks ago, I can confirm that this project is still going strong. :) EDIT: And if you were asking for the names of any startups using Rust, our next SF meetup has the theme "Rust in Production", with presentations by Tilde, MadeSafe, Ironworks, and Terminal.org: http://www.meetup.com/Rust-Bay-Area/events/222260315/ http://www.meetup.com/Rust-Bay-Area/events/222260315/
        honest_joe 11y ago
        Well ok but Dropbox was more or less a startup in the past. Also from what i know Samsung is also invested in the Rust eco ?
        kibwen 11y ago
        Samsung does lots of Rust via Samsung OSG, but they're a secretive enough company that it's tough to get them to reveal what they're up to on the inside.
Jweb_Guru 11y ago
I have heard a couple of comments about Rust not being "there" yet. Why is it not "there" for you? Where, precisely, is "there"? I certainly hope you are not basing this opinion on a blog post from 2014 with terrible methodology (even the maintainer of the benchmarks came down to comment on how egregiously he was misusing the numbers).
- pjmlp 11y ago
  Not take this as a post against Rust, I like the language and what is trying to be achieved. Just listing some of the issues, from my point of view, Rust currently faces. It is not there if one is looking for uses cases where GC performance doesn't matter e.g. Haskell, OCaml, .NET, JVM. All existing alternatives enjoy more mature libraries, editors, supported OSes and so on. It is not there if the goal is to replace C++ on the mobile platforms, as it introduces hurdles and increases the development time versus using the vendor tooling. Specially in the iOS and Windows Phone, where C++ is a first class language. A kind of Objective-Rust, Rust/CX are needed there, even if rustc is able to cross compile. On Mac OS X it is not there in regards to Swift tooling and available libraries, additionally for many developers ARC and GDC might just be good enough, even if Swift is less safe than Rust.
  - Jweb_Guru 11y ago
    Sure, I agree with you that in many cases Rust would be inappropriate and that Rust needs to work on its C++ interop story. I just don't like it when people make sweeping claims like "Rust isn't there yet" without justification.
  - kibwen 11y ago
    What makes you suspect that Swift is less safe than Rust?
    - pjmlp 11y ago
      Multithreading safety with GDC is not ensured as in Rust, as for the rest, I would say it is as safe as any Cedar/ML descendant.
noelwelsh 11y ago
Every big data platform I know of is or already has implemented manual memory management (they all run on the JVM). I can see Rust doing well in this world. It's hard to say things like Spark are undervalued. (Two data points: ~$50M investment in Databricks, the company commercialising Spark. IBM just committed ~3.5K developers to working on Spark projects.)
- kibwen 11y ago
  Big data could be huge for Rust. I have a friend who works in the Hadoop ecosystem who's about to take a 90% pay cut to leave his current job in favor of using Rust at a startup. If I had gratuitous amounts of money, this is the field that I'd be investing in.
  - frankmcsherry 11y ago
    Shameless self-promotion for big data in Rust: https://github.com/frankmcsherry/timely-dataflow https://github.com/frankmcsherry/timely-dataflow https://github.com/frankmcsherry/differential-dataflow https://github.com/frankmcsherry/differential-dataflow Nothing much useful to contribute, except that they mostly work, are largely unsafe-free (unsafe in some sorting, and a Drain replacement), and build on 1.0 stable.
- pella 11y ago
  The new Cockroachdb implementing in GOlang https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach

kibwen 11y ago

I wouldn't be worried about Rust competing, just because HN revolves around web tech doesn't mean the rest of the world undervalues systems programming. :)

honest_joe 11y ago
I meant financially undervalued by companies. Yes you have some players here and there but overall the market is not that big. And an investment to this area from a developer's POV is too much of a risk. Also the learning curve is too steep. Web tech is just the simplest way to reach the end user. Mobile apps or desktop apps are becoming a hassle as well. It just takes time to "install" something and use it. I hope thing change but I am skeptical.
- kibwen 11y ago
  I think you yourself underestimate how big the market is here. :) One of my tasks for the past few weeks has been to get in touch with companies using Rust, and whereas I expected to be talking to nothing but early-stage startups, to my surprise there are some biiiig companies out there using Rust. People in more conservative environments are only just picking it up now that 1.0 is here, expect many more announcements as to who is using Rust to emerge in the next 6 - 12 months.
  - alimbada 11y ago
    Can you give more detail? Which companies and/or where are they based?
    - kibwen 11y ago
      I'm not at liberty to say which companies are using Rust without asking their permission, but one enormous company that's been publicly open about their usage of Rust is Dropbox. To avoid divulging anything myself, I'll just link to what they've posted elsewhere: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/374mre/we_just_switched_from_rust_to_nim_for_a_very/crk48jw https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/374mre/we_just... https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/2xvtll/getting_acquainted_with_mio/cp5tfa4?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/2xvtll/getting_acquai... https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/387ucr/question_are_established_c_or_c_projects/crtep1l?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/387ucr/question_are_e... Having met them for lunch a few weeks ago, I can confirm that this project is still going strong. :) EDIT: And if you were asking for the names of any startups using Rust, our next SF meetup has the theme "Rust in Production", with presentations by Tilde, MadeSafe, Ironworks, and Terminal.org: http://www.meetup.com/Rust-Bay-Area/events/222260315/ http://www.meetup.com/Rust-Bay-Area/events/222260315/
      - honest_joe 11y ago
        Well ok but Dropbox was more or less a startup in the past. Also from what i know Samsung is also invested in the Rust eco ?
        kibwen 11y ago
        Samsung does lots of Rust via Samsung OSG, but they're a secretive enough company that it's tough to get them to reveal what they're up to on the inside.

Jweb_Guru 11y ago

I have heard a couple of comments about Rust not being "there" yet. Why is it not "there" for you? Where, precisely, is "there"? I certainly hope you are not basing this opinion on a blog post from 2014 with terrible methodology (even the maintainer of the benchmarks came down to comment on how egregiously he was misusing the numbers).

pjmlp 11y ago
Not take this as a post against Rust, I like the language and what is trying to be achieved. Just listing some of the issues, from my point of view, Rust currently faces. It is not there if one is looking for uses cases where GC performance doesn't matter e.g. Haskell, OCaml, .NET, JVM. All existing alternatives enjoy more mature libraries, editors, supported OSes and so on. It is not there if the goal is to replace C++ on the mobile platforms, as it introduces hurdles and increases the development time versus using the vendor tooling. Specially in the iOS and Windows Phone, where C++ is a first class language. A kind of Objective-Rust, Rust/CX are needed there, even if rustc is able to cross compile. On Mac OS X it is not there in regards to Swift tooling and available libraries, additionally for many developers ARC and GDC might just be good enough, even if Swift is less safe than Rust.
- Jweb_Guru 11y ago
  Sure, I agree with you that in many cases Rust would be inappropriate and that Rust needs to work on its C++ interop story. I just don't like it when people make sweeping claims like "Rust isn't there yet" without justification.
- kibwen 11y ago
  What makes you suspect that Swift is less safe than Rust?
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    Multithreading safety with GDC is not ensured as in Rust, as for the rest, I would say it is as safe as any Cedar/ML descendant.

noelwelsh 11y ago

Every big data platform I know of is or already has implemented manual memory management (they all run on the JVM). I can see Rust doing well in this world. It's hard to say things like Spark are undervalued. (Two data points: ~$50M investment in Databricks, the company commercialising Spark. IBM just committed ~3.5K developers to working on Spark projects.)

kibwen 11y ago
Big data could be huge for Rust. I have a friend who works in the Hadoop ecosystem who's about to take a 90% pay cut to leave his current job in favor of using Rust at a startup. If I had gratuitous amounts of money, this is the field that I'd be investing in.
- frankmcsherry 11y ago
  Shameless self-promotion for big data in Rust: https://github.com/frankmcsherry/timely-dataflow https://github.com/frankmcsherry/timely-dataflow https://github.com/frankmcsherry/differential-dataflow https://github.com/frankmcsherry/differential-dataflow Nothing much useful to contribute, except that they mostly work, are largely unsafe-free (unsafe in some sorting, and a Drain replacement), and build on 1.0 stable.
pella 11y ago
The new Cockroachdb implementing in GOlang https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach