Jamey Sharp On Whether You Should Translate Your Code To Rust

[Shimon]

Rust???

It's 2017, why is anyone still wasting time talking about failed languages like Rust?

The only thing Rust succeeded at was becoming the new D.

You might be onto something. However, the amount of hype surrounding rust might draw people in, who in turn might prefer to protect their investment and keep betting on the fad, instead of admitting their irrational enthusiasm was unwarranted. Human nature and critical mass, really.

[CrystalGamma]

It's 2017, why is anyone still wasting time talking about failed languages like Rust?

How is Rust a failed language? It hasn't even been in release for two years, and with the next release the biggest problem holding back the ecosystem, namely many big libraries like serde and diesel only working with good ergonomics on nightly, will be addressed.

(Also, "It's ${current year}, why …?" is never a good argument, I wish people would learn that)

[Holograph]

How is Rust a failed language? It hasn't even been in release for two years, and with the next release the biggest problem holding back the ecosystem, namely many big libraries like serde and diesel only working with good ergonomics on nightly, will be addressed.

(Also, "It's ${current year}, why …?" is never a good argument, I wish people would learn that)

Lots of useless things have been around for years. Not a valid argument for using them. Also, Mozilla is losing relevance in general.

[cjcox]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mc7soWR7sOQ

[kaprikawn]

Learning a new language/development environment is a non issue if this new shining toy is sufficiently familiar to what people is used to do. How many projects based on node.js, golang,julia, scala appeared in the last 4, 5 years. But for languages that departs from the traditional way like pretty much all functional languages, like haskell and ocaml the number of projects stays rather small

Learning a new language is trivial for one person. Getting absolutely everyone to learn it isn't. You're always going to get people who code in C, have always coded in C and will only ever code in C. And node.js and the like might be cool and might have seen great uptake, but can you write the Linux kernel or Glibc in node.js? Node.js etc. might be great for some use cases, but when you're talking about the core components of GNU/Linux which is the bread and butter of FOSS you really need a compelling reason to move away from the tried and tested technologies.

As others have correctly pointed out, Rust is a fad. Redox OS is cool and I applaud the contributors. But I don't think you're going to see Binutils or something written in Rust. You might see some software rewritten in Rust as a proof-of-concept or a hobbyist side project, but you're not going to get anyone outside of Mozilla use it for anything serious.

[starshipeleven]

Learning a new language is trivial for one person. Getting absolutely everyone to learn it isn't. You're always going to get people who code in C, have always coded in C and will only ever code in C. And node.js and the like might be cool and might have seen great uptake, but can you write the Linux kernel or Glibc in node.js? Node.js etc. might be great for some use cases, but when you're talking about the core components of GNU/Linux which is the bread and butter of FOSS you really need a compelling reason to move away from the tried and tested technologies.

Can we please not compare webapplication frameworks (node.js) with actual compiled languages (Rust/C/friends) plz?

Because if to prove your point you need to do these bullshit comparisons, your point wasn't that good to begin with.

[Luke_Wolf]

As others have correctly pointed out, Rust is a fad. Redox OS is cool and I applaud the contributors. But I don't think you're going to see Binutils or something written in Rust. You might see some software rewritten in Rust as a proof-of-concept or a hobbyist side project, but you're not going to get anyone outside of Mozilla use it for anything serious.

Did you even RTFBP?

https://github.com/uutils/coreutils

[Almindor]

Rust is a nice attempt but it's not "there" yet. It has issues, for example last I used it signal handling was not finished properly causing race conditions (see posted link). People jump on these bandwagons a bit too soon me thinks.

It's probably a better idea to write new things in new languages than try to rewire an old program written old-style into this new way of thinking (which rust definitely is). I'd wait a few more years before writing anything serious in it.

[kaprikawn]

Can we please not compare webapplication frameworks (node.js) with actual compiled languages (Rust/C/friends) plz?

Because if to prove your point you need to do these bullshit comparisons, your point wasn't that good to begin with.

I didn't bring up node.js, the person I was responding to did. I was comparing with Rust with C/C++. I'm saying that it isn't a good idea to wholesale rewrite stuff traditionally written in C to use Rust. There were no bullshit comparisons in my argument. I said node.js was probably good for the use cases it's used for.

[kaprikawn]

Did you even RTFBP?

https://github.com/uutils/coreutils

Show me a serious distribution that uses that version of Coreutils written in Rust. Until you can I'd deem that a proof-of-concept or hobbyist pet project, you know, like I wrote in my post.