Four Years of Rust

Re:Four Years of Rust by UnpossibleJim on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @12:16PM (#19920889)

Not to be the nay sayer here, but garbage collection kind of goes against the premise of Rust, as stated by the mission statement. I'm a fan of Rust, but I also like Python, but they are different tools for different problems. Go seems like the tool for your specific problems. I'm not trying to be offensive towards you, or anything, but Rusts mission statement was written pretty clearly and the reasons against a garbage collection were laid out reasonably. It's a systems language, meant to be along the lines of C or C++. Used for close to the metal projects, like operating systems, or drivers (ostensibly), where a garbage collector is going to have a debilitating effect as cycles and efficiency are very necessary. The compiler is the checker, taking the place of the garbage collector (sort of).

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Re:Four Years of Rust by ummonk on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @01:06PM (#19921482)

You're missing the point. Go is not the tool for their specific problems because it's a crappy language that lacks generics, algebraic data types, etc.

In contrast, a language very much like Rust, but with GC, would be the right tool for their problems.

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Re:Four Years of Rust by lostmsu on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @01:49PM (#19921923)

How about Scala?

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Re:Four Years of Rust by amelius on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @01:27PM (#19921711)

If this is true then Rust is the wrong tool for many projects in which it is currently used. Most of those projects are not an OS or driver and are far from the metal.

Even the compiler itself would not fit your description.

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Re:Four Years of Rust by UnpossibleJim on Wednesday May 15, 2019 @02:34PM (#19922351)

It doesn't HAVE to be used for bare metal, but that's what it's best at, but it is bad for quick prototyping, that's for sure. So if you had a project that needed a project that needed quick turn around and rapid prototyping and someone wanted to use Rust because it's the "new hotness" or whatever, then absolutely not. It's the wrong tool for the job. The same as C, or C++ would be the wrong tool. Python is great for something like that.

Just like if you wanted heavy number crunching and data manipulation, I'd push someone towards R and Scala as they have the libraries to handle it (and, I'd also say Python, but I'm starting to show my biases here). Go is great for back end systems, as that's what it was designed for, and it's now getting libraries built out for it for other things to fill in gaps for other things, just as Rust is filling in other spaces, but there's only so far it can go from its original design doc. The GC makes it, inherently, not a systems language. That doesn't mean it isn't great at other things. Rust is great as a systems language, that doesn't mean it isn't great at other things, but it's terrible as a rapid prototyping language. It lacks that capability. It wasn't designed for that =/

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