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Re:Rust Is Surprisingly Good as a Server Language by logicchains on Monday July 13, 2020 @03:54AM (#23818244)
>I used to be the same way, but the more I practiced holding the state in my head while I worked, the better I got at it.

Doesn't that partially defeat the point of having a powerful compiler? The more work the compiler does, the less we have to keep track of in our head (and conversely, much of the pain of coding in a language like Python is the amount of stuff we need to mentally keep track of).

Re:Rust Is Surprisingly Good as a Server Language by echelon on Monday July 13, 2020 @04:00AM (#23818300)
The compiler makes sure we're not making mistakes, and it keeps the code safe from humans.

I think this is somewhat orthogonal.

Re:Rust Is Surprisingly Good as a Server Language by zapzupnz on Monday July 13, 2020 @04:06AM (#23818336)
In a modern, well-supported programming language's arsenal, there are many tools that work to take some of the pains of coding away. The compiler is but one of them.

Unexpected behaviour and errors can be caught by means other than constant recompilation, and tools exists to do just that. In IDEs, these tools tend to become invisible, seamless, and can be relied upon without much configuration; for those accustomed to less integrated environments, the manual configuration required to get these tools up and running becomes a hassle.

I suppose using those tools efficiently and constant recompiling are different ways to solve the same problem, but I wouldn't say it's solely the compiler's job even in the latter case. For languages that aren't super-fast for compiling like Rust, Swift, etc. there may be much more reliance on those other tools.

Re:Rust Is Surprisingly Good as a Server Language by kd5bjo on Monday July 13, 2020 @04:04AM (#23818324)
> The more work the compiler does, the less we have to keep track of in our head

There’s two sides to this: on the one hand, you don’t have to keep as much info in your head because the compiler will tell you if you ask it. On the other hand, when you do try to keep state in your head, the compiler is able to double-check that for you so that you don’t have to do it perfectly.

With a language like Python, you’re working without a safety net, so you make small, cautious, steps in order to not fall. A strongly-typed language like Rust enables you to make larger, bolder, changes in one go, confident that the little mistakes will get caught.