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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

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.
honest_joe 11y ago
Lets put it this way. Rust is great and all for somebody who is willing to invest in it but there are simply other "mature" alternatives that are just as good.
- Jweb_Guru 11y ago
  Can you describe for me the alternatives to Rust that are memory safe without mandatory garbage collection and allow safe deallocation? The only industry language I'm aware of that meets these criteria and isn't a full-fledged theorem prover is ATS, and to call it a "mature alternative that is just as good" is kind of laughable.
  - SamReidHughes 11y ago
    Rust isn't memory safe. You have to use unsafe blocks to do a lot of useful stuff.
    - EugeneOZ 11y ago
      You don't have to. Example: https://github.com/iron/iron/ https://github.com/iron/iron/
    - Jweb_Guru 11y ago
      Rust is only not memory safe in the same sense that any language with C FFI or a runtime written in C++ that isn't formally verified isn't memory safe. Which basically includes every language.
      - SamReidHughes 11y ago
        You said garbage collection. You can't make whatever data structures in Rust that you want, without unsafe blocks or garbage collection (or no deallocation).
        Jweb_Guru 11y ago

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.

honest_joe 11y ago

Lets put it this way. Rust is great and all for somebody who is willing to invest in it but there are simply other "mature" alternatives that are just as good.

Jweb_Guru 11y ago
Can you describe for me the alternatives to Rust that are memory safe without mandatory garbage collection and allow safe deallocation? The only industry language I'm aware of that meets these criteria and isn't a full-fledged theorem prover is ATS, and to call it a "mature alternative that is just as good" is kind of laughable.
- SamReidHughes 11y ago
  Rust isn't memory safe. You have to use unsafe blocks to do a lot of useful stuff.
  - EugeneOZ 11y ago
    You don't have to. Example: https://github.com/iron/iron/ https://github.com/iron/iron/
  - Jweb_Guru 11y ago
    Rust is only not memory safe in the same sense that any language with C FFI or a runtime written in C++ that isn't formally verified isn't memory safe. Which basically includes every language.
    - SamReidHughes 11y ago
      You said garbage collection. You can't make whatever data structures in Rust that you want, without unsafe blocks or garbage collection (or no deallocation).
      - Jweb_Guru 11y ago