Was Rust Worth It?
jsoverson.medium.com
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From JavaScript to Rust, three years in.

The thing I repeat most often is: at least it’s not C++. Rust is the best systems programming language I’ve found. There’s no language that’s perfect for every usecase and ideally, I’d love to learn Haskell for prototyping, but it’s more academic than practical.

@KaczuH wow interesting take! My personal experience is that I LOVE refactoring rust code! Basically just change what you need to change and follow the to-do list returned by the compiler, knowing nothing will probably be forgotten. It’s such a powerful thing that I now dread any big refactoring in other codebases, even Typescript.

@KaczuH to be clear that probably the only point over which I think otherwise than the article. It’s definitely a slower coding and iteration experience, that’s the tradeoff of the robustness and correctness.

The Rust standard library is enormous.

Lol wat, no, it most certainly is not

I know what they mean. It may not be enormous, functionality-wise, but just the Iterator trait alone feels enormous when you’re trying to figure out which method does what you want.

I think it’s indicative of a need for more work put into making the UI teach people how to search by function signature.

DreamButt
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As someone who is a big fan of shipping fast and shipping often :tm: this article is both really great and also cemented why I’ll never like rust. It’s a neat tool, just not for me

I think that’s normal for statically typed languages. You prototype and move quickly in dynamically typed language, then you can stabilize in a statically typed language.

You can still ship quickly and often in rust, it just depends on what you’re doing and of course who’s writing the code. I mean, look at the guys that made MakePad. It’s still a startup and they have made something quite impressive in Rust. Watch their presentation from this year.

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DreamButt
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Seriously what’s up with lemmy and taking the most disingenuous interpretation of someone’s words

The article literally covered how rust is terrible for iteration and refactoring. Which are corner stones to building software in a small business. Which is where I’ve worked for the last six years. Which is also my personal favorite way to write code.

Y’all don’t have to start a damn argument every time someone disagrees with you

The problem is everyone shilling someone else’s personal opinion as if it is a fact. I use Rust. I have no difficulty iterating or refactoring (did that just now). Granted, you are under no obligation to take my word. But why would someone’s blog post be more authoritative than my own experience?

DreamButt
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I’m glad you enjoy it. If you find the blog to not fit within your world experience no one is saying you need to take it otherwise. However the author’s take did resonate with me

The “problem” (as you put it) is that people get emotionally invested in their language of choice. Instead of just accepting that there will always be as many languages (and styles of language) as there are types of people

Rust is great! I’m glad people like it. But for me it will always be painful and that slows me down. A slow developer is a hungry developer

People can like different things y’all

I can totally understand the iterating speed due to higher cognitive load of a statically typed language, and non instant compilation.

However I am very surprised about your refactoring experience. For me Rust is at least in a league of its own. In python/js I am terrified that I could break some unknown parts of my code whenever I touch anything. In C++ I fear that I just broke an invariants and made something UB. In all those languages, I expect regressions when I’m refactoring. But in Rust, even for large scale architecture changes if it compiles I’m quite certain that it’s going to be easy to validate and often works the first try. What point points do you enconter that make your experience sub-optimal ?

Yebo
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@tdawg @technom You are spot on. #Rust is for perfectionists.

I’m right there with you. I’ve been using Rust for years. If anything, Rust has increased my ability to iterate and refactor.

I agree with your sentiment about users sometimes are disingenuous with their fanboyism. But trying to pretend article is saying rust is terrible for refactoring is not a fair argument either. Some library grade code may require more attention, yes. But in most cases it means you would need to do many changes in other languages too, but you’ll discover it in production.

DreamButt
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Y’all are taking my hyperbole a bit literal. I’m sure rust is fine. The article had brought up that iteration and flexibility are the weak points. This resonates with my personal experience. That was my entire point from the beginning. I don’t like rust, I will never like rust. I’m glad y’all like rust. There is no “argument” here. It’s just opinion

The only thing I have issue with is people pretending I’m somehow a crazy person for not liking their favorite toy

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