Null References: The Billion Dollar Mistake

Re:Null References: The Billion Dollar Mistake by mhh__ on Saturday January 11, 2020 @06:27PM (#22023171)

Rust is a force for good but I think Andrei Alexandrescu was right when he said Rust feels like it "skipped leg day" (in the sense that it has its party piece and not much else) - from the perspective of the arch metaprogrammer himself at least.

Rust is obviously good for safety but for everything else (to me at least) it seems unidiomatic and ugly, admittedlty I've never really sunk my teeth into it (I've read a fair amount into the theory behind the safety features but never done a proper project)

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Re:Null References: The Billion Dollar Mistake by Stratoscope on Saturday January 11, 2020 @10:47PM (#22024329)

> ...Andrei Alexandrescu was right when he said Rust feels like it "skipped leg day" (in the sense that it has its party piece and not much else) - from the perspective of the arch metaprogrammer himself at least.

Mind if I ask what that means? It seems like an interesting observation, but there are a couple of bits of terminology I don’t understand, like "leg day" and "party piece".

Any clarification would be appreciated, thanks!

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Re:Null References: The Billion Dollar Mistake by amelius on Saturday January 11, 2020 @11:04PM (#22024394)

Perhaps this link would explain it more clearly: [1].

Leg-day is bodybuilding terminology, and refers to the day of the week when the bodybuilder is supposed to be training the leg muscles. According to the meme, nobody wants to train the legs because they show the least.

[1] https://www.jonathanturner.org/2016/01/rust-and-blub-paradox...

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Re:Null References: The Billion Dollar Mistake by Stratoscope on Saturday January 11, 2020 @11:15PM (#22024439)

Thank you, that is very informative!

> nobody wants to train the legs because they show the least.

It reminds me of the story about how Google drops products because no one wants to maintain an existing product. That would not show "impact", not like launching a new product would, and impact is how you get raises and promotions.

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Re:Null References: The Billion Dollar Mistake by zozbot234 on Saturday January 11, 2020 @08:43PM (#22023856)

Rust has procedural macros. What else do you need for metaprogramming?

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Re:Null References: The Billion Dollar Mistake by heavenlyblue on Saturday January 11, 2020 @08:10PM (#22023686)

>> unidiomatic and ugly

I am not sure I would take anyone seriously who thinks this is a valid point to make about a programming language.

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Re:Null References: The Billion Dollar Mistake by mhh__ on Saturday January 11, 2020 @10:12PM (#22024218)

That was my personal opinion, unrelated to the first paragraph.

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