www.digitalmars.com         C & C++   DMDScript  

digitalmars.D - A diatribe on Rust

reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksTyCQwHGro&t=3317s

I wonder where D stands with regard to the author's various comparisons 
and contrasts between Rust and C++.
May 12 2021
next sibling parent reply Paul Backus <snarwin gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 13 May 2021 at 02:09:20 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksTyCQwHGro&t=3317s

 I wonder where D stands with regard to the author's various 
 comparisons and contrasts between Rust and C++.


The substantive criticisms appear to be:

1. Binary bloat
2. Long compilation times
3. Poor C interop
4. Safety checking often fails to prevent bugs in practice (due 
to `unsafe`)
5. General immaturity of tooling & ecosystem

D does much better at (3) and either a little or a lot better at 
(2) depending on how heavily you use templates. (1) and (4) are 
probably pretty similar. (5) is similar now, but Rust appears to 
be on a better trajectory.
May 12 2021
parent reply Paulo Pinto <pjmlp progtools.org> writes:
On Thursday, 13 May 2021 at 02:24:51 UTC, Paul Backus wrote:

 On Thursday, 13 May 2021 at 02:09:20 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
 wrote:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksTyCQwHGro&t=3317s

 I wonder where D stands with regard to the author's various 
 comparisons and contrasts between Rust and C++.


 The substantive criticisms appear to be:

 1. Binary bloat
 2. Long compilation times
 3. Poor C interop
 4. Safety checking often fails to prevent bugs in practice (due 
 to `unsafe`)
 5. General immaturity of tooling & ecosystem

 D does much better at (3) and either a little or a lot better 
 at (2) depending on how heavily you use templates. (1) and (4) 
 are probably pretty similar. (5) is similar now, but Rust 
 appears to be on a better trajectory.


Rust is definitely on a better trajectory.

https://security.googleblog.com/2021/04/rust-in-android-platform.html

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2021/05/06/announcing-rust-for-windows-v0-9/

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/innovating-with-rust/

https://security.googleblog.com/2021/04/rust-in-linux-kernel.html

https://engineering.fb.com/2021/04/29/developer-tools/rust/

Right now the best is to really fix the pending issues, instead 
of trying to compete with Rust, the language has hit jackpot with 
Linux kernel, Android and Windows support from the vendors 
themselves.
May 12 2021
parent Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= <ola.fosheim.grostad gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 13 May 2021 at 06:26:00 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:

 Right now the best is to really fix the pending issues, instead 
 of trying to compete with Rust, the language has hit jackpot 
 with Linux kernel, Android and Windows support from the vendors 
 themselves.


Yes, trying to compete with Rust or C++ is at this point a lost 
battle, D should play to its strengths (but be willing to change 
in areas that will make the ride smoother).
May 13 2021
prev sibling parent reply IGotD- <nise nise.com> writes:
On Thursday, 13 May 2021 at 02:09:20 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksTyCQwHGro&t=3317s

 I wonder where D stands with regard to the author's various 
 comparisons and contrasts between Rust and C++.


I agree with the author for most of the part. I predicted that 
more and more people would notice some of the inconveniences with 
Rust, and the popularity will plateau.

For some years ago I did an investigation what language was the 
best to replace some of my C++ code (both embedded and 
application code) and I found Rust to be too inconvenient. This 
eventually led me to D which seems to be the language that can do 
most what I was looking for and is as well kind of forgiving.

This also makes me want to warn the D maintainers not to try to 
shoe horn features that you find in Rust into D too quickly. Give 
it more time and see what features can stand the test of time in 
Rust, what was a fad and what was not. D has recently taken too 
much impression from Rust with  safe as default and borrow 
checker (which isn't a new memory management method). Something I 
don't care that much about.
May 13 2021
next sibling parent reply Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= <ola.fosheim.grostad gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 13 May 2021 at 11:01:31 UTC, IGotD- wrote:

 I agree with the author for most of the part. I predicted that 
 more and more people would notice some of the inconveniences 
 with Rust, and the popularity will plateau.


I don't know. Professional adoption is slow and comes with 
improved tooling. Go is a very boring language and has surprising 
adoption levels (for such an uninteresting language).


 This also makes me want to warn the D maintainers not to try to 
 shoe horn features that you find in Rust into D too quickly. 
 Give it more time and see what features can stand the test of 
 time in Rust, what was a fad and what was not. D has recently 
 taken too much impression from Rust with  safe as default and 
 borrow checker (which isn't a new memory management method). 
 Something I don't care that much about.


Yes, don't bring more tedium into the language profile. D needs 
to appeal to hobbyists and people who use it for personal 
projects, and adding stuff that is tedious will be very bad. Less 
tedium... is where D can have an edge (in this climate).
May 13 2021
parent sighoya <sighoya gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 13 May 2021 at 11:32:08 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:


 I don't know. Professional adoption is slow and comes with 
 improved tooling. Go is a very boring language and has 
 surprising adoption levels (for such an uninteresting language).


Yes, but it is
1.) a simple language
2.) baked by a big company

The first point make it suitable for productive software 
development, the second offers many jobs for go developers.
May 13 2021
prev sibling parent reply sighoya <sighoya gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 13 May 2021 at 11:01:31 UTC, IGotD- wrote:

 I agree with the author for most of the part. I predicted that 
 more and more people would notice some of the inconveniences 
 with Rust, and the popularity will plateau.


I hope so, it was too much hyped for my taste.
Just remembering on the trifecta they promised, safe, concurrent 
and fast and that all with ownership/borrowing.

The truth is however, that borrowing is too limited to achieve 
concurrency treating your program literally to cooperative 
exclusive threading only.

Therefore, RC and ARC must be used instead which on the other 
hand eventually lead to unsafe code.

It was also hyped that borrowing/ownership replaces GC, but what 
I see in most codebases is the use of RC structures, just because 
they are more convenient.
May 13 2021
parent reply sighoya <sighoya gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 13 May 2021 at 14:36:51 UTC, sighoya wrote:

 On Thursday, 13 May 2021 at 11:01:31 UTC, IGotD- wrote:

 I agree with the author for most of the part. I predicted that 
 more and more people would notice some of the inconveniences 
 with Rust, and the popularity will plateau.




https://blog.darklang.com/why-dark-didnt-choose-rust/
May 13 2021
parent Paul Backus <snarwin gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 13 May 2021 at 14:38:24 UTC, sighoya wrote:

 https://blog.darklang.com/why-dark-didnt-choose-rust/


One bit that particularly stood out to me:


 I think most of us don't need Rust. I think Rust is a wonderful 
 community, ecosystem, and tooling, wrapping a language that 
 nicely solves a problem very few of us have. It's just so nice 
 over there, until you actually write code.
 
 It's easy to forget, given how nice everything is with the 
 error messages and the docs, that Rust is a very low-level 
 language. We're so attracted to the community and the tooling 
 that we forget that low-level languages suck. Maybe Rust has a 
 better story than most low-level languages, but remember that 
 garbage collectors are great. By having a GC, we don't have to 
 do any of the stuff that causes all these problems in Rust. 
 Maybe that costs performance, but I need the ability to quickly 
 write code a lot more than I need the extra performance.


A potential advantage of D, compared to Rust, is that while you 
*can* write low-level code in D, you're not *forced* to. So even 
if Rust is a better language for projects that are 100% 
low-level, D may be a better choice for projects that are mostly 
high-level, but need the ability to dip down into low-level code 
in specific places.
May 13 2021