High level folks complain it takes too long to code in and is hard to understand the borrow checker. Low level folks complain it takes too long to code in and is hard to understand the borrow checker. Honestly though the borrow checker is a great compromise to idiot proof memory leak prevention, and the C folks can just throw in unsafe when they want start slinging pointers and manual heap management. The macro system alone is so good I don't think it's fair to appraise the language until you've written a dozen macros
this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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I'd argue the macros are quite bad:
- Declarative macros are hard to read, same level as regex
- Procedural macros require to write a new crate with a ton of boilerplate, sometimes for stuff conceptually really simple (like hash is: apply the same function to every field, then compose the results)
I agree, though, that it's better there're here than nothing. It's just that there is to be a better solution.
Rust has gained immense popularity for its ability to help developers write robust and efficient code without sacrificing ease of use.
Rust's unique features and design principles grant it several advantages over other programming languages
I don't want praise and ads, I want honest and clear points: what good and what not so good.
Good:
- fast
- high-level language constructs like iterators
- memory bugs harder to write vs C/C++
- compiler errors are ridiculously helpful
- borrow checker makes some hard things easier (memory management; Inter-thread communication)
Not so good:
- you will not like the borrow checker, even as it saves you from yourself
- executables are larger due to static linking
- language is BIIIG
- compilation is slow (but getting better)
Overall, I like Rust a lot. I think its reputation as a great language is well-deserved. It's not an "easy" language to use, but it prevents so many footguns... It takes me longer to get to a working prototype in Rust. But the first time it compiles successfully... it's probably right.
If I'm working on a project that needs to be fast, I'll reach for Rust over C these days.
you will not like the borrow checker, even as it saves you from yourself
I absolutely love the borrow checker. When I do stupid things, instead of me debugging segfaults in prod a week later, it goes "here dumdum, that won't work"
Rust gives me better safety than popular high level languages because it is properly typed AND C++ like performance.
In the past I'd always be forced to choose between:
-
fast development, slow runtime, big fat VM to lug around, no segfaults
-
slow development, fast runtime, no VM, segfaults
With Rust I finally get both! Fast development, fast runtime, no VM, no segfaults. It's a dream come true.
I get that there are some half-gods with 30 years of experience that can write safe and reliable C++, but I am not as smart as them nor have I 30 years to learn. And thrn again, even the best C++ developers still occasionally write memory management bugs. It's been more than a decade since I've actually been happy with a new programming language, and I love it.
Thanks, you comment definitely makes me want to try Rust.
Could you tell me, can I use Rust as general purpose application language? Something like: create small executable app (win,unix,mac) that read some files, and do something with it, create GUI app that connects to DB and do something with it, etc?
Yesbut...
Rust's GUI frameworks are all (afaik) still pretty early and a little clunky to use.
...and compiling for Windows is a little clunky.
From a purely yes/no perspective, you can absolutely use Rust for building desktop GUI apps... But I'd recommend using a different language unless your app has really tight performance requirements.
If you want to make a cross platform app with good GUI support, I'd a actually recommend checking out Godot. It's technically a game engine, but the built in scripting language (gdscript) and GUI components are really great. If gdscript is too slow for your purposes you can swap in a lot of other languages (including Rust) though C# is the best supported of these.
You might like Tauri
Unfortunately GitHub Stars doesn't equal real world use in business. But we're getting there
Be the change you want to see in the world. Rust is used at my workplace because a colleague and I lobbied for it when a project came up in which it fit.
Sure, but there is a lot of effort involved with bootstrapping a new language in a larger dev organization. But we'll get there
TLDR: because it's the best