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After many years of waiting, version 1.0 of the Rust programming language has finally been released. The Rust home page describes Rust as "a systems programming language that runs blazingly fast, prevents nearly all segfaults, and guarantees thread safety."
Thanks to the hard work of noted Rust core team members Yehuda Katz and Steve Klabnik, Rust is now poised to become a serious competitor to established systems programming languages like C and C++.
The announcement has brought much jubilation to the followers of Rust, who have been eagerly awaiting this milestone release for so long. With only 1,940 open issues and over 11,500 issues already closed, Rust is finally ready for users to build fantastically reliable software systems using it.
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Once you've seen one nuclear war, you've seen them all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15 2015, @10:32PM
What does Rust give me that modern C++ doesn't already give me?
I can already get memory safety using modern C++.
I can already get thread safety using modern C++.
I can already get "blazingly fast" binaries using modern C++.
So what does Rust give me that C++ doesn't already give me?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15 2015, @11:25PM
It goes to 11.
(Score: 4, Touché) by nitehawk214 on Friday May 15 2015, @11:27PM
So does C++ [wikipedia.org]
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @03:09AM
Actually, it goes to 14 [wikipedia.org]. Soon it will go to 17!
Take that Rust! You'll need to pull off a Firefox if you want to catch up.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by davester666 on Sunday May 17 2015, @05:48AM
Isn't Mozilla driving this project? It's probably up to 5.0 already.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @02:18AM
I guess only us geezers would get the reference [youtube.com].
(Score: 2, Troll) by bob_super on Friday May 15 2015, @11:30PM
A name that evokes decay instead of something positive? Another way to confuse people when you talk about your job? Something different, to appeal to your hipster self? Something your current PHB can't comment on, even if he was a software guy before crossing to the dark side?
Still looking for the actual positive, bear with me...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Marand on Saturday May 16 2015, @05:44AM
A name that evokes decay instead of something positive?
Because, when choosing a programming language, its name is the most important consideration. Rust? Must be old and creaky. C and C++? Those sound like bad grades, nobody will use those. D is a worse grade than C, so it's right out, but A+ [wikipedia.org] is awesome because it evokes thoughts of good grades.
You also have to watch out for Python, because snakes are icky. And don't even get me started on Perl and Ruby! Pearls and rubies are expensive, so while those are obviously high-quality languages, you have to expect maintenance costs for using them will be high as well. Swift's the best language, though, because it sounds fast. It's like putting flame stickers on your car -- just naming it Swift makes it faster. That's science, son! You can't argue with that!
I don't care about Rust, but if you're going to bitch about a language, come up with something more concrete than "lol the name is dumb" because that complaint is fucking stupid. The AC troll that keeps showing up to complain about the language changing drastically and claiming that Rust programs crash a lot is doing this better than you.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Sunday May 17 2015, @03:13AM
And you have clearly supplied unquestionable evidence in response to the original question (which is still the title of the post).
I merely pointed out that something that's brand new, and doesn't provide unquestionable technical advantages, should at least come with a name that makes PHBs feel good when they present their budgets. I'm sorry if my reality offends you, but it contains lots of really dumb PHBs and billions in advertising dollars.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Sunday May 17 2015, @03:58AM
And you have clearly supplied unquestionable evidence in response to the original question (which is still the title of the post).
I was making a joke about part of your of your troll post, not making any effort to defend Rust. Even if I wanted to defend it -- and I don't, because I don't care for Rust anyway -- I wouldn't be wasting the time doing it to you, because you entered the conversation with heavy bias to begin with. Your subject was a question, sure, but then you followed it with a bunch of loaded hostility that essentially said "I have already formed an opinion about this and decided my language is superior, JUST TRY to prove me wrong, I WANT TO ARGUE"
Hell, you're still doing it. My comment went off on a tangent based on a small part of your post, because I wasn't interested in taking your bait, so of course your response attempted to steer it back toward your original trolling so that you can proclaim the superiority of your language of choice. Thing is, I don't even care about that. If Rust works for someone, cool. If it doesn't for someone else, that's cool too. I don't really care for either C++ or Rust (I'd rather see more usage of D), so if that's the argument you want (and it seems to be), you're better off looking elsewhere.
I just saw the silly "Rust is a bad name lol" thing and thought it would be funny to follow the absurd argument to its extreme.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Sunday May 17 2015, @04:08AM
> you can proclaim the superiority of your language of choice
That would be Verilog and various scripting ones, making you whole point moot.
I'm sorry if you thought I was a trolling zealot; I have not stake in the whole Rust/C argument.
(Score: 4, Funny) by maxwell demon on Saturday May 16 2015, @07:10AM
Hah, I can do better. I hereby introduce my new programming language: Bitrot.
And Bitrot is really better than Rust, because it only has two bugs:
But then, it is absolutely impossible to write a buggy program in Bitrot. Take that, Rust!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by mtrycz on Friday May 15 2015, @11:43PM
Maybe Rust's syntax is decidable?
In capitalist America, ads view YOU!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @12:09AM
It would have been far more succinct to just write "Get off my lawn, dammit!!!"
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @03:55AM
You gain modules and their related compile time improvements, better option/union type support with pattern matching, compiler enforced thread safety/no data races, more robust templates with better errors, not needing header files, simpler syntax etc.
Personally I like the more expression oriented style, memory safety and provable lack of memory leaks and dangling pointer bugs. It keeps the main feature of C++ I care about (the ability to call C and C++ code, and be called by it). Rust is a decent language to write a module for an otherwise C or C++ project in if you want some of its features.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @05:19AM
You gain modules and their related compile time improvements
The module system is nowhere near as flexible as the options that C++ allows for, both file-based and in terms of namespaces and classes. Besides, all modern C++ compilers have supported precompiled headers for ages, which drastically improves compilation time.
better option/union type support with pattern matching
After using this in Haskell and Scala, it's useful, but not that useful. Much of this can be done using C++'s templates well enough.
compiler enforced thread safety/no data races
This is only as good as the language implementation is. Rust is a language with a single implementation with almost 2,000 open issues. If the implementation is so broken, how can I be sure that whatever the compiler is enforcing is being done correctly?
more robust templates with better errors
I don't think that's true. C++'s templates are quite robust and powerful already. Rust doesn't really improve on that. Modern C++ compilers, especially Clang, offer very comprehensible and useful template error messages these days. Even GCC is getting better.
not needing header files
Header files aren't a bad thing. They're quite powerful.
simpler syntax
Rust's syntax is very similar to C++'s. C++'s syntax is generally quite straightforward. Even C++'s semantics are quite easy, compared to stuff like Rust's ownership semantics.
In closing, it has taken Rust years to get to this point, and there's not much to show for it. I don't think we'll see any miracles that suddenly allow it to become any better than it already is (or isn't).
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @05:57AM
Regarding your comment on thread safety: the threading/sync stuff is actually a library feature (they rewrote it to be such recently). Rust's owner ship semantics are enough to make that possible. Fixing the few remaining holes in the compiler soundness checks should be easier than fixing even one large C++ project, and it will fix all the rust projects.
As for templates: personally I like that that templates only validate once: you can't have a compile error in a particular instantiantion, and its clear what types are legal to paramaterize it with.
If you like header files and get along well with precompiled headers, stick with your c++. I'm just happy I can call your code from rust :)
C++ is a great language if you are a badass, but I'm much rather hire devs to write me rust than C++ where there is so much less shit they can get wrong. I could trust interns to write secure multithreaded code thats performant (Don't do that in most languages). Its also far harder to break when refactoring (The completeness guarantees on match are one such example).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @01:03PM
Rust's ownership semantics will leave you scratching your head, and then once you finally understand how it's supposed to work, you'll still end up fighting the compiler.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Saturday May 16 2015, @07:22AM
I disagree with this. It shows on many places that the C syntax on which it builds simply wasn't made for it, and some added syntax also is not exactly helpful.
Consider the following code, and think about why you need the bolded keywords:
template<typename T, typename U> typename T::value_type f(T t, U u)
{
T foo(U()); // C++'s most vexing parse; do you see what's wrong?
return foo.template frobnicate<int>(u);
}
Don't get me wrong, C++ is the best language I know. But its syntax is not its strong point.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Saturday May 16 2015, @08:01AM
Templates can lead to some really odd cases: See also this blog post [reverberate.org].
Responding to the GP point: C++ syntax can be straightforward provided you only use a subset of the features; however nobody can agree on what that subset is, and as soon as you use someone else's code/library then the complexity explodes. The C++ standards approach of "throw another feature into the mix" isn't helping any.
(Score: 4, Informative) by turgid on Saturday May 16 2015, @09:07AM
What does Rust give me that modern C++ doesn't already give me?
I can already get memory safety using modern C++.
With great difficulty and the help of three policemen.
I can already get thread safety using modern C++.
Again, with great difficulty, the help of three policemen and an awful lot of debugging.
I can already get "blazingly fast" binaries using modern C++.
On a very expensive CPU with huge amounts of cache memory.
So what does Rust give me that C++ doesn't already give me?
Fewer lines of code to achieve the same thing? Less effort, more productivity? Less demented syntax? I don't know. I don't follow faddy languages and hokey religions, especially not C++.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday May 16 2015, @11:13AM
RAII is not "great difficulty". Of course if you insist to still use manual new/delete, then things can get complicated. But there's normally no reason to do that.
You demonstrate that you have no clue about C++. C++ code runs just as fast as C code, unless it got programmed by a complete moron.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by turgid on Saturday May 16 2015, @11:21AM
You demonstrate that you have no clue about C++. C++ code runs just as fast as C code, unless it got programmed by a complete moron.
I've seen an awful lot of C++ code over the years, and the more I see of it, the more I realise that 99.9% is written by complete morons.
C++ code tends to be complex, brittle and buggy, slow to compile, hard to debug (people think the "strict type safety" of C++ absolves them of writing unit tests and checking errors), incompatible at the binary level with everything else (and the library you compiled last week)...
And lets not mention that C++ people are allergic to actually writing proper code to solve a specific problem because there are "standard libraries" that they can throw at it until it superficially hides it.
And just what on earth are C++ exceptions about? Talk about giving people a machine gun to shoot themselves in the foot with...
C++ will always be with us, I'm afraid, so it's best to know your enemy.
If you're thinking about writing something in C++, do yourself and the world a favour an write it in plain C. You stand a chance of getting it to work correctly, understanding it 6 months later, and being able to reuse it in another project.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday May 16 2015, @12:11PM
So you think the people who don't write unit tests for C++ would write them for C?
And what is wrong with using the standard library? Do you also reimplement printf to avoid using the C standard library? The standard library is there to be used, and should consist of decent code; if not, use another vendor (if the standard library implementation is shit, probably the compiler is, too).
Of course you have to learn how to correctly use the library, just as you have to learn how to correctly use the language (and mind you, there's more than enough C code written by morons as well). If you think that implementing a stack by inserting/removing values at the beginning of a vector (yes, I've seen that!) is a good idea, then you are simply clueless. But that's not a fault of the standard library, that is the fault of the code author.
And there are many more ways to shoot yourself in the foot with C style return-error-code error handling; You can simply ignore errors without immediate consequences — until the error actually occurs. In which case the ignored error can have fatal consequences. Now in C++, you of course also can ignore exceptions, but you have to do so explicitly. just not handling the exceptions will cause the program to terminate, instead of simply continuing despite of the error.
And of course, if you prefer C-style error handling, you can use it in C++ as well; however you can even improve on that by making completely ignoring the return value a runtime hard fail even if no error occurred (I don't know a way to make it a compile time error, though).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @06:52PM
People who write bad C++ code aren't going to magically write good Rust code!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @07:03PM
No, they're going to hang out on interweb forums boasting about how wonderful C++ is and that all the people that can't see that are ignorant morons.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @10:09PM
I've seen an awful lot of C++ code over the years, and the more I see of it, the more I realise that 99.9% is written by complete morons.
OTOH Rust will attract programmers who are far, far, above average, and will be studiously careful to use the language only in the right way...
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @10:48PM
Even the designers of Rust couldn't implement the Rust compiler using Rust without introducing a shitload of bugs.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bart9h on Saturday May 16 2015, @12:43PM
C++ could run just as fast as C code, *IF* you mostly use C-style coding.
I once rewrote a routine to read a file huge text file with 3D coordinates and values,
from using standard C++ streams to C's fscanf().
It was EIGHT times faster. And no, it was not badly written in C++. I had already optimized the hell of it, avoiding creating std::string objects, etc, even with the help of my brilliant coworkers (one of them, which is a HUGE fan of C++, was latter hired by Amazon).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bart9h on Saturday May 16 2015, @12:32PM
A better question would be,
What does Rust give me that D doesn't?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @07:38AM
No GC.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @02:36PM
Simple. Widespread adoption and popularity of Rust gives you tons of 'obsolete' C/C++ code and CS grads that only know Rust. In turn, this allows you to charge more for your C/C++ coding skills. Are you ready to support Rust now?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15 2015, @10:35PM
Are there any benchmarks that show how fast Rust really is? The summary says it "runs blazingly fast" but that's not what I've experienced when I used the Rust compiler, which is implemented in Rust. The Rust compiler was really slow. I think it was even slower than the C++ compilers I've used, and C++ compilers are very slow compared to Delphi's compiler or even the C# compiler. How can the Rust website say that it "runs blazingly fast" without giving any proof?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @02:16AM
I haven't used Rust but I gather that it has much more complicated semantics than C, so compilation would probably would slow even if Rust were written in C or C++. But expect that to improve as optimizations are discovered and/or implemented.
(Score: 3, Informative) by TGV on Saturday May 16 2015, @07:23AM
I just read this (http://www.viva64.com/en/b/0324/), which has a benchmark and some other criticism. Rust seems to be 2 to 3 times slower than C, on par with Java, Go and Haskell.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Marand on Saturday May 16 2015, @09:06AM
There's also Debian's benchmark game [debian.org], for whatever it's worth. Definitely slower than C/C++, but like you said it's somewhere in the Go/Haskell/Java (and other JVM languages) area. The trade-off might be worth it for the safety if it proves itself to actually be safer, though in that speed range there's already plenty of competition with similar goals but different approaches.
Damn shame about the syntax, though. Out of curiosity I started looking at some of the Rust files in the only big project I know of using it, Servo ( https://github.com/servo/servo [github.com] ), and I swear, there are lines in it that make Perl look readable. I liked this function declaration:
pub fn match_ty_unwrap<'a>(ty: &'a Ty, segments: &[&str]) -> Option<&'a [P<Ty>]> {
I'm sure it makes sense to someone familiar with the language, but my general impression so far from poking around random Servo files is "the readability of Perl meets the conciseness of Java." What's not to love?
(Score: 2) by TGV on Saturday May 16 2015, @09:37AM
Declaration syntax is sure ugly, but I sort of get it: it's pretty much C++/Java but with colons. The passing of &mut everywhere. I don't understand why it can't get that information from the function declaration. Is it also legal to call the same function without &mut, and with a different effect? There is something in that language that isn't explained properly in all those examples and FAQs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @01:06PM
Why did they use the keyword "mut"? It makes me think of a dirty dog pissing all over the place because its penis is broken from having spent years on the street.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15 2015, @10:38PM
I was reading about Rust's error handling [burntsushi.net] yesterday and it sounds absolutely awful to me! They should just support exceptions like C++ (and Java and C# and so many other modern languages) has.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15 2015, @10:40PM
I thought that Rust was supposed to make buggy code hard to write. So why have the Rust compiler and the Rust stdlib suffered from so many bugs?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15 2015, @11:22PM
This is a good question. When I last submitted an LLVM bug, the bug number was in the 21000s. LLVM is a lot more complex than Rust is, but it's written in C++ instead of Rust. Why does a complex compiler system (supporting multiple programming languages!) written in C++ only have say 25000 bugs, but a Rust (and only Rust!) compiler written in Rust has around half that number? Theoretically the Rust number should be a whole lot lower, or the C++ bug count should be a whole lot higher. But the empirical evidence is showing the opposite to be true! The big system written in the "unsafe" language has fewer bugs than the much smaller system written in the "safer" language!
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday May 16 2015, @09:51AM
It just means that the compiler and standard library was hard to write.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @01:16PM
But the compiler and standard library are mostly written in Rust, so the same promises should apply equally well to them. They're Rust code like any other.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday May 16 2015, @02:14PM
Logic 101: If Rust makes buggy code hard to write, and the compiler and library are buggy code written in Rust, then what follows?
Or in short: Whoosh!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15 2015, @10:43PM
Servo [github.com] is the only big Rust project I know of.
I tried it recently and it was not very good. It was slow. It was buggy. It crashed a lot.
Isn't Rust supposed to prevent those kind of things? Why didn't it in Servo's case?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15 2015, @10:49PM
Remember, people who like Rust are called Rustaceans, and they should never be called Rustafarians. [ycombinator.com]
Steve Klabnik did his social justice duty and pointed out that "The community generally doesn't like that name, as it has awkward, appropriating connotations. [ycombinator.com]"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @12:28AM
I can appreciate his concern for appropriation of minorities' identities. I'm an African Pygmy who works as a software developer. Unfortunately, a good fraction of the jobs available to me involve handling and authoring ".py" files. The cultural appropriation of my people triggers the fuck out of me rendering me unable to work. I wish all white/yellow men developing programming languages would follow Steve's enlightened example.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15 2015, @10:52PM
Yehuda Katz and Steve Klabnik? Weren't they once big names in the Ruby community? What's the relation between Ruby and Rust?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday May 15 2015, @11:09PM
From the looks of their names, it seems that the only relations are suckering people for Sheckels.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15 2015, @11:12PM
What's a sheckel?
(Score: 2) by GeminiDomino on Saturday May 16 2015, @02:29AM
The in-game currency in "Heretic Kingdoms: Inquisition" (a quite good, if short, ARPG)
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15 2015, @10:54PM
Are any SNers using Rust? What have you built with it so far?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15 2015, @11:24PM
Let me add that I tried to but the compiler crashed on me so I couldn't actually use it. No, I didn't file a bug report. I just don't use buggy software.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @03:18AM
> Compiler crashed, I don't use buggy software.
But you do use buggy anecdotes.
It was a beta, it was supposed to be buggy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @05:22AM
No, pre-alpha and alpha software is allowed to be buggy. Beta software should be release-grade software (that is, without bugs), but just not yet proven to be without problems. Once this release-grade software is proven during the beta testing period, it can be released. In fact, when done properly, the beta release directly becomes the final release.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15 2015, @10:56PM
This is great news! What's the next big story going to be? That Perl 6 1.0 has been released?!
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday May 16 2015, @09:11AM
It will run on GNU/Hurd 1.0.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15 2015, @11:02PM
I don't think C is going anywhere anytime soon for serious work. I'm reminded of this particular rant from Linus [cat-v.org]. That was a rant against C++ mind you. I was looking over the error handling [burntsushi.net] that another poster complained about. It's interesting. It looks like they pulled in some ideas from Haskell, and are giving you low-level tools to reinvent exceptions if that's what you want. Guess what though? I'm willing to wager that Linus doesn't want to reinvent a features that he hates in C++, using a new language. Long live King C, JMHO... but not enough to stake my sweet, sweet userid on it. Posting AC.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15 2015, @11:09PM
I think Rust is going to fizzle out. It doesn't bring enough gains, and its ownership semantics are a real fucking whore to deal with. Average programmers just won't be able to understand it. Rust will be yet another item in Mozilla's long, long list of failed projects.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15 2015, @11:35PM
Yeah, no shit. I was somehow confused by the "Anonymous Coward" name on your post. Thanks for clearing that up.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday May 16 2015, @10:20AM
So Linus does not like C++. So what? Linus is not god, nor his prophet, he's not even the pope. He's not infallible. Everything he says is just his own personal opinion, which probably is often right, but for sure not always.
If Linus says something about OS kernel development, I tend to believe him. If he says something about any other topic, I have no reason to believe him more than anyone else developing software.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 15 2015, @11:16PM
There needs to be more than just 1 implementation of Rust. Like there are many C++ compilers out there. I won't feel good using Rust until I know there are at least 2 different compilers I can use. It's good to compile systems code with multiple compilers to make sure it's good code.
(Score: 4, Touché) by tibman on Saturday May 16 2015, @12:15AM
Woah, slow down there. Let's start with more than one project written in rust.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @02:37AM
I'll make a brand new start of it, with Rust 1.0
I want to hack code in the language that never sleeps [ultimateclassicrock.com].
Then I'll have synchronized threads; uncorruptible heaps.
(after Frank Sinatra)
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday May 16 2015, @03:05AM
back in the day, to hire a Python programmer, one had to train them on the job. That was the case for Smalltalk too.
Now you can't get Python work unless you have years of experience. No one does Smalltalk anymore.
I actively avoided Javascript for many years, now I'm studying it but quite unenthusiastic about it. I have reason to believe I'd enjoy Ruby but I'm going to wait until I've slogged through at least one Javascript book.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @03:37AM
That's the wrong way to think about learning.
Instead, ask yourself, what can this language (or tool, or API) do for me, or for someone else (a software business or project)? A fair amount of what distinguishes it from other languages will be preferences of the language's creator, but if the language has any attraction at all, chances are that it has some "special sauce" that elevates it above the crowd in at least some way. You should be moderately enthusiastic about learning that special sauce, because it will come up again and again in various contexts. For example, a lot of the innovations from Smalltalk were later taken up by the Design Patterns community and Gang of Four, and then were adopted wholesale (not always in an elegant way) for the likes of Java and Microsoft DCOM and .NET.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday May 16 2015, @03:54AM
I'm cool with someone else writing JS, I can see there are many advantages to doing so.
My concern is, what code could I write, that few if any other engineers could write?
I'm into tweaky assembly code.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @06:55AM
It would be interesting to get a list of people who are actively supporting this abortion of a language. This can tell us what they are really up to.
They must be trying to get everyone into programming, saying "its not difficult, anybody could do it" etc. And thus get the dumbest drooling people into the game who will tell people they are "hardcore programmers", lowering the value of real programmers. Its not dissimilar to race mixing, where everyone is equal. No, rather the dumb is the new smart; the repulsive is the new cute...
The shadow groups have been trying to get "easy" languages adopted for quite some time, but it never worked out for the simple reason that these people are rarely smart, although extremely cunning. This rust will not work out either. It will not replace any language. It will die a quiet death, and no flowers will be sent. It doesn't provide anything C++ doesn't already have (I don't even bother to look at the syntax any more set by these "language inventors").
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @06:54PM
That comment should be modded up. It's obviously not trolling. It's pointing out real problems with Rust.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 18 2015, @07:21PM
I can't wait to see the Internet melt down with the flame wars between the zealots of the C++ religion and the emerging fanatics of the upstart Rust cult. This should truly be a spectacle to behold!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @07:55AM
Ya, ok, so we are competeing for developers.
How about we stop doing that and look at languages like colors on a pallete?
Want to paint a red sky? Maybe rust is the color of choice for your particular project.
It is getting real annoying how these "Dice" type stories intended to probe and spread propaganda are defecating all over our news space.
And no, I don't want to know yet another fucking language that some Human Resource clerk is going to post on their job board next to the 10 or 20 other standards and protocols and languages we are magically suppose to know.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @01:10PM
We'd rather just use C++. We can use it for low level systems programming. We can use it for high level application programming. We can use it for everything in between. We get faster code out of it than we get out of nearly every other programming language, except C, but then again almost all C code is also C++ code. Why the fuck do we need a "pallete" of programming languages when C++ already does everything just fine?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @01:33AM
I once gave a co-worker a mind-fuck by showing him how to calculate the first few dozen zeroes of the Bessel functions of first and second kinds from just two lines of python code using numpy and scipy extensions; I can also do it with their derivatives too. And to top it off, my code was easy to decipher. Let's see you do that in C++. Yeah, yeah...I know. the code under the hood is really C/C++. Still...it was impressive. I am not as familiar with R, but I gather that you can do some pretty amazing stats calculations in a very few lines of code using that language. Why reinvent the wheel when someone has already done it for you?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Saturday May 16 2015, @10:36AM
I'd almost rather use C, LISP, and FORTH because they're different from each other. I have to switch among Java, C#, Python, JavaScript, etc. All of these modern languages are basically the same, but they do everything differently. They have the same basic syntax, but every little thing about them is different. Cognitively it's hard to switch from one similar language to another. I often know exactly what I want to do, but draw a blank on how to do it in any specific language. (Last week, I couldn't remember if JavaScript had a startsWith() method for strings. And why does C# sometimes use mystring.Method() and other times String.Method(mystring)?)
The problem I have is that I don't even want to look at another language. I don't want to pollute my brain with more ways to do the same thing. I want to use as few languages as possible to make the cognitive task of switching among them easier. Rust may be the greatest thing that has ever happened to programming, but I still don't want to even look at it.
Love them or hate them, Microsoft is going to get a lot of traction with their .NET on Linux because it will simplify development. C# is the same difference as Java, and if I can use one language on all platforms, I'd be a lot happier.
You know what's funny? All we hear about is the "shortage" of developers. So why aren't there more industry standard languages? Developers would be more productive if each platform and stack didn't have its own language, and we could reduce some of the extreme fragmentation and standardize on a few core languages. Back in the Good Old Days, knowing C, C++, Perl, and SQL meant a developer could do almost anything on any platform. Now it seems like every platform has a walled garden; a stack of similar-but-different frameworks for ORM, MVC, etc; and one or more programming languages. Hey, corporations, if you can't find developers, why not create industry standards again so that skills are portable?
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 1) by jrial on Friday May 22 2015, @07:53AM
A lot of what you point out is exactly how I feel about programming languages, and I always get a lot of flak from other developers for picking one or a couple of languages and never looking beyond them until the job requires it.
And I can see both sides of the argument: as an amateur blacksmith, I know I have multiple tools to do more or less the same job. I can grind my flats with the flap disc on the angle grinder, or I could use the belt grinder. Or I could do it by hand, using a file and finishing with sandpaper. And depending on the situation, I will choose the correct tool for the job. So I understand when a fellow programmer comes to me and says "whoah, you're going to do that in C++ with these libraries? This is a *perfect* job for node.js! They may be right, it may actually be the better suited language and framework to write this particular thing in. But on the other hand there are a few important differences between having multiple tools for grinding my knives, and having multiple languages to write my projects in:
I'm not one of those people who needs to play with the latest and greatest new technology if I already have more than enough technology under my belt to achieve the same thing. It may not be as elegant, it may not be as hip, but it works and it frees me from investing in knowledge that will only be beneficial in a limited set of situations, and probably for a limited time too.
Install windows on my workstation? You crazy? Got any idea how much I paid for the damn thing?