I love building a startup in Rust. I wouldn't pick it again

Re:I love building a startup in Rust. I wouldn't pick it again by jdlshore on Friday February 17, 2023 @06:51PM (#34842211)

> makes cleaning up resources easier

I've never really had a problem with it, but I isolate such resources behind a wrapper, which makes cleanup easy. I just create a little higher-order function:

  function doSomethingThatNeedsCleanup(fn) {
    const thing = createTheThing();
    try {
      return fn(thing);
    }
    finally {
      cleanUpTheThing(thing);
    }
  }

> this drives me absolutely insane (console.log(["10", "10", "10"].map(parseInt) outputs [10, NaN, 2])

That's not really an issue with the type system, that's just coincidence and bad luck.

The signature of parseInt is:

  parseInt(string: string, radix?: number | undefined): number

And Array<string>.map(fn) takes a function with the signature:

  fn(element: string, index?: number | undefined, array?: string[] | undefined): any

So parseInt coincidentally matches the signature Array<string>.map() is looking for.

I'm not sure what you expect the type system to do here. It works just fine at catching an actual type error, such as this:

  console.log([10, 10, 10].map(parseInt)

...which correctly complains:

  Argument of type '(string: string, radix?: number | undefined) => number' is not assignable to parameter of type '(value: number, index: number, array: number[]) => number'.
    Types of parameters 'string' and 'value' are incompatible.
      Type 'number' is not assignable to type 'string'.

(As I'm sure you know, this is the correct code: `console.log(["10", "10", "10"].map(s => parseInt(s))` .)

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Re:I love building a startup in Rust. I wouldn't pick it again by jjnoakes on Friday February 17, 2023 @07:51PM (#34842694)

> So parseInt coincidentally matches the signature Array<string>.map() is looking for.

If that were true I'd not mind quite as much... but actually, parseInt takes two parameters and map passes three.

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Re:I love building a startup in Rust. I wouldn't pick it again by jdlshore on Friday February 17, 2023 @08:52PM (#34843057)

Map’s second and third parameters are optional. Your functions aren’t required to implement them, which is good, because most of the time you don’t need them.

Again, this isn’t a type system issue. It’s both an API design issue and a poor programming hygiene issue. (Don’t pass bare functions if you don’t know what the parameters are.)

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Re:I love building a startup in Rust. I wouldn't pick it again by jjnoakes on Friday February 17, 2023 @09:06PM (#34843118)

> Map’s second and third parameters are optional.

I mean, map always passes them in, so in that sense they aren't optional. Mixing that with functions that take in optional parameters, but aren't usually called with them, gives you a ticking time bomb, IMO. And double that danger when the language's type system allows you to call a function with more parameters than it could ever take.

> Don’t pass bare functions if you don’t know what the parameters are.

This is exactly the kind of thing I want my programming language's type system to catch for me, if I'm working in a language with a static type system like TS.

And even in dynamic languages, this is exactly the kind of thing I want my programming language to catch for me at runtime. Python does, for example.

Stuff like this - while it might fit JS and TS and make sense to some - makes absolutely no sense to me, and is why I simply look to other languages to fit my needs.

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Re:I love building a startup in Rust. I wouldn't pick it again by Mapsmithy on Friday February 17, 2023 @11:09PM (#34843805)

How would you change the Type System to fix this particular issue?

>> Don’t pass bare functions if you don’t know what the parameters are.

> This is exactly the kind of thing I want my programming language's type system to catch for me, if I'm working in a language with a static type system like TS.

Hows your compiler supposed to know you don't know what the parameters are?

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Re:I love building a startup in Rust. I wouldn't pick it again by jjnoakes on Saturday February 18, 2023 @12:04AM (#34844075)

> How would you change the Type System to fix this particular issue?

In TS you really can't (that's my point and why I prefer to avoid the language) because of JS and API baggage. But just about every other static language that I've worked in can complain for this kind of thing.

> Hows your compiler supposed to know you don't know what the parameters are?

Why does the compiler care about what I know? The compiler itself knows what the function's parameters are and it can tell me that something seems wrong because I'm asking it to call a function that maxes out at 2 parameters with 3 parameters.

TS does catch this kind of thing in a lot of places. It just intentionally decides not to do it for these kinds of callbacks because of the same JS and API baggage.

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