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Eric S Raymond, author of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", blogs via Ibiblio
I wanted to like Rust. I really did. I've been investigating it for months, from the outside, as a C replacement with stronger correctness guarantees that we could use for NTPsec [a hardened implementation of Network Time Protocol].
[...] I was evaluating it in contrast with Go, which I learned in order to evaluate as a C replacement a couple of weeks back.
[...] In practice, I found Rust painful to the point of unusability. The learning curve was far worse than I expected; it took me those four days of struggling with inadequate documentation to write 67 lines of wrapper code for [a simple IRC] server.
Even things that should be dirt-simple, like string concatenation, are unreasonably difficult. The language demands a huge amount of fussy, obscure ritual before you can get anything done.
The contrast with Go is extreme. By four days in of exploring Go, I had mastered most of the language, had a working program and tests, and was adding features to taste.
Have you tried using Rust, Go or any other language that might replace C in the future? What are your experiences?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @08:45PM
Old man disapproves of youth culture. That does it. Shoot ESR in the head. He's finished.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 16 2017, @08:56PM
A programming language is a cultural thing? So, what you're saying is, special snowflakes need their own languages? Seems to me that languages evolve, and the new generations twist languages to their own use and purpose. But, I never heard that youth need their own language before.
I figure you're just blowing hot air, and taking a stab at people over 30. Go on now, get off the lawn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @09:02PM
Special snowflakes like ESR? I guess he does. And since Runaway cannot code at all, not even a snowflake, more of a sleet-drop.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 16 2017, @09:17PM
Wow, you finally got something right. Runaway can't code. On a good day, Runaway can step through some other person's code, and see what's happening. But, Runaway just never got into coding. The most complicated thing he has ever done was to code a game on a TRS-80, way back in the day when BASIC was a thing. I even saved it to cassette, so that I could play the game again, and again.
But, none of that has anything to do with my reply to AC above.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @09:14PM
Holy fuck, you're old and demented.
Look at this, Rust has a Code of Conduct [rust-lang.org]. That's right, don't follow the link and don't read it.
Now, a programming language doesn't need a code of conduct. Normally you publish a specification and distribute a compiler and programmers follow your reference manual to write programs in your language. That's if you're just making a language.
Rust isn't just a language. It's a social movement. All of the recent languages are social movements. If you look at the bottom of that Code of Conduct which you didn't read, you'd see "Adapted from the Node.js Policy on Trolling "
If you're old you might think you don't need to join the social movement to use the language, and that's true. But you'd be better off sticking with C because if you bother to learn Node.js or Go or Rust, all of your work will be ignored unless you are a member of the social movement surrounding each of those languages.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 16 2017, @09:21PM
Coc is for chicks - I don't have anything to do with them. I don't read EULA's, TOS's, or any of that other crap. Or, actually, sometimes I do read them, just to see how many ways I can violate them. I certainly don't take that crap seriously.
If these children want me to even consider a code of conduct, they need to demonstrate that they understand my own code of conduct. Call it the "Give a fuck code".
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday January 16 2017, @09:32PM
Considering how hideous the language is, you'd think they need all the help they can get, troll or not.
I got a headache just from looking at 4 lines of that gobshite.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @09:50PM
Coc is for chicks - I don't have anything to do with them.
Then why do you want to force them to have babies? Why are you in favor of defunding Planned Parenthood? My god, you are so old and demented! Older than ESR!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @10:11PM
Oh my god, it's true! Runaway is older that ESR! Why do these geezers insist on living longer than is fashionable?
FUCK YOUR COCK OF CONDUCT
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Monday January 16 2017, @11:45PM
Code of conduct is nothing without kindness [pastebin.com] (CoCK) built in!
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @09:42PM
Any community that needs a code of conduct is not a community I want to belong to.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @09:50PM
Good luck getting a job. It's a post-skills world out there and social fit is everything.
There's a television documentary you should see. It's called "Younger".
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday January 16 2017, @11:36PM
Then you be smart enough to bullshit what they want to hear, and hopefully settle into a company with a tolerable culture.
Actually, there are such things as places that aren't San Francisco or Portland where you get sent to the turkey-farm or shit-canned for trying to being that bullshit into the workplace -- although that bad stereotype is perpetuated by Silicon Valley assholes and everybody believes it to be gospel.
Hell, at a previous job I worked only a couple years ago calling each other names like "joto, mamon, maricon, chavala," and "swishy" was commonplace in the shop and the women who overheard those slurs thought it was hilarious. Women like to see men being men and they are fascinated by the locker-room grabassing of a manly environment - and that environment consisted of 3 Whites (including me), 2 Blacks, a Puerto-Rican, and 2 Gooks -- Oh, and one Black and one Gook were female but could sling insults and put men in their place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @11:49PM
Women who aren't scheming to get everyone fired? Now I know you're lying.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 17 2017, @12:58AM
I am self employed.
There's this thing you should see too, it's called "The Real World".
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 17 2017, @01:25AM
You should as well. It's full of people like me. We have most of the money and hire for the jobs.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 17 2017, @11:15AM
I work for myself - I'd be hiring you. If you behave like a retarded child, cannot work alongside others without pointless interpersonal drama or are in need a "code of conduct" then you are simply not employable.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 17 2017, @11:23AM
I think you missed the sarcasm earlier in the thread.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @11:39PM
Oh my god, it's true! Runaway is older that ESR!
But only just about the same level of lechery towards twenty something females. Creepy really old men!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 17 2017, @12:43AM
Guess what pal, that's the natural order. I am in my 40s and would not consider any woman beyond her early 30s to be worth my time. Sexual attraction is for men, women favor providers. This is why old movies pair males in their 50s with girls in their 20s. Suck it!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 17 2017, @01:35AM
I don't even program and this sounds like a load of bull.
I don't care who writes what unless its good -- then maybe I will go out of my way to thank them for their contribution.
But to enforce social involvement to contribute code? To ostracize introverts? It's like taking away the industry they created and calling them bad for creating the job you have.
Social isolation of others because they didn't agree to your code of conduct... that's what the local water buffalo club requires, so that people's wives don't get suspicous of their poker nights and gentlemen's club visits all under the guise of golfing. And also the golfing, which some women hate even more.
But this -- you're refusing the contributions of intellectuals because they don't fit your clique, that's about as unintellectual as one can get.
People on the far left and people on the far right sure bump shoulders a lot.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday January 17 2017, @02:41AM
it’s your responsibility to make your fellow Crustaceans comfortable.
Will they be more comfortable in a pot of boiling water?
(Score: 3, Informative) by jdavidb on Monday January 16 2017, @09:21PM
I never heard that youth need their own language before.
http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1992/09/01
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by iWantToKeepAnon on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:27PM
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday January 16 2017, @10:45PM
Also, AC apparently didn't even RTF Summary, where ESR states:
Yeah, what a slouch and an idiot that ESR must be, learning a language in a week. Python was the same way for me: zero to useful code in under a week, because Guido's ideas were mostly good.
As far as what the next C should be, I really don't have an answer, because for the kinds of things C is used to do, particularly the really low-level stuff like operating systems, it's extremely hard to top C. People much smarter than me (e.g. Bjarne Stroustrup) have been trying to write the "next C" for decades, and none have succeeded.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 17 2017, @08:36AM
In the end, the backend libraries of most C-killers are written in C, whereas you can implement the C backend in C.