Would you consider replacing Ruby with Rust instead of Go?

Re:Would you consider replacing Ruby with Rust instead of Go? by tptacek on Monday November 16, 2015 @07:06PM (#10578276)

Go would be decent for applications asymptotically approaching web browsers if the user interface options were better. It's UI library support that makes Go such a bear for desktop applications, not any fundamental property of the language.

In general, I find Go works really well for anything I would normally code in C in userland.

A better way to put it: if you can reasonably write it in Java, you can almost definitely write it in Go. Nobody calls Java a "scripting language".

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Re:Would you consider replacing Ruby with Rust instead of Go? by deckiedan on Tuesday November 17, 2015 @12:17AM (#10579297)

I kind of think web browsers are a special case - along with complex game engines with very high framerate requirements, and running lots of custom scripts.

But yes, GUI apps would be pretty good in Go, if there was better library support. I totally agree.

I wasn't trying to say Go is a "scripting language"... Maybe that came across badly.

There's a lot of crossover from where 'scripting' merges into the 'real application' world. I had a bunch on bash scripts for writing large video projects to tapes, and synchronising projects on multiple workstations. I then wrote a very simple web app so that non-techies could control it too without the commandline. I then ended up writing a small job queue for that, and a few other bits to go along with it, some workstation monitoring, and so on. It's now a 3k lines small python application, with a few shell scripts underneath.

That domain, Go could work pretty well for too, I think.

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Re:Would you consider replacing Ruby with Rust instead of Go? by pcwalton on Monday November 16, 2015 @07:17PM (#10578315)

> Go would be decent for applications asymptotically approaching web browsers if the user interface options were better.

No, it wouldn't. Browsers are too performance critical. You need an industrial-strength optimization pipeline in the compiler, and even having a GC is risky.

(There are numerous other smaller-but-still-critical reasons why Go's design prevents it from working as the implementation language for a competitive browser, but these two are the biggest show-stoppers.)

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Re:Would you consider replacing Ruby with Rust instead of Go? by tptacek on Monday November 16, 2015 @07:27PM (#10578356)

I agree, which is why I replaced "applications like web browsers" to "applications asymptotically approaching web browsers".

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