despite developers' positive feelings toward Rust, 97% of them hadn't actually used it.
Who says they love something they have not used???
I might say something seems decent, but no way would I say I *LOVE* a language until I've done a few real things in it.
The top issues that respondents say the Rust project could do to improve adoption of the language are better training and documentation, followed by better libraries, IDE integration, and improved compile times...
despite developers' positive feelings toward Rust, 97% of them hadn't actually used it.
Who says they love something they have not used???
Somehow this reminds me of Ruby back in the day. Only back then, it was developers who only learned it the prior week being overly enthusiastic about it.
But yeah, Rust seems to have a huge cheerleader squad on various tech sites, that's definitely out of proportion with people who actually use it. Most of the actual Rust-based projects I've run across so far, tend to be novel (and not drop-in) replacements for various command line utilities. I almost never actually use these after installing them, because o
I think in some ways, it's perhaps because people love the idea of Rust as much or more than the language itself. The concept is pretty compelling, really - a compiler/language that actively presents you from shooting yourself in the foot, which C++ allows you to do if you step outside of "voluntary best practices", and which C seems to gleefully encourage with the slightest misstep. And all this while still achieving the fantastic run-time efficiency of a natively compiled language. What's not to love?
I think in some ways, it's perhaps because people love the idea of Rust as much or more than the language itself. The concept is pretty compelling, really - a compiler/language that actively presents you from shooting yourself in the foot, which C++ allows you to do if you step outside of "voluntary best practices", and which C seems to gleefully encourage with the slightest misstep.
I think the key is, almost no one has come out of school in the past 10 years or so and gone into low-level programming. People get taught Java and web programming, and get jobs doing that. So most of the people who would actually be choosing between C, C++ or Rust for actual work have already spent a decade or two learning all the ins and out of C or C++. Those "voluntary best practices" are second nature. The days when the average development experience with C or C++ was less than 5 years was long past.
So, Rust solves a problem that only exists in principle. If you're on a team with an average of say 15 years working in C++, all the gotchas and footguns of that language don't actually bother anyone any more. It's the devil you know.
So, Rust solves a problem that only exists in principle.
I think it's worse than that. Not only does it solve a problem that's already been solved (for those who program with care, at least), but it introduces a whole raft of new problems. Last time I looked (which admittedly was a while ago), nobody could work out how to do a GUI in Rust. If the language experts have trouble working out how to make the language do routine things, adoption is going to be a problem.
Hmm, people do GUIs in C quite often. A few minor components that implement some object abstraction method and you can go far. So if Rust can't do what C can...
20 years or so ago, I wrote a reasonably large GUI toolkit for X11 in C. It worked out great. The code base was neat as a pin and trivial to use. Using C++ would have added quite a bit of unnecessary complexity.
I'd say that only a masochist or worse would use C++ in place of C.
Wait a second... (Score:5, Insightful)
despite developers' positive feelings toward Rust, 97% of them hadn't actually used it.
Who says they love something they have not used???
I might say something seems decent, but no way would I say I *LOVE* a language until I've done a few real things in it.
The top issues that respondents say the Rust project could do to improve adoption of the language are better training and documentation, followed by better libraries, IDE integration, and improved compile times...
That is a pretty tall list of things that
Re: (Score:2)
despite developers' positive feelings toward Rust, 97% of them hadn't actually used it.
Who says they love something they have not used???
Somehow this reminds me of Ruby back in the day. Only back then, it was developers who only learned it the prior week being overly enthusiastic about it.
But yeah, Rust seems to have a huge cheerleader squad on various tech sites, that's definitely out of proportion with people who actually use it. Most of the actual Rust-based projects I've run across so far, tend to be novel (and not drop-in) replacements for various command line utilities. I almost never actually use these after installing them, because o
Re: (Score:5, Informative)
I think in some ways, it's perhaps because people love the idea of Rust as much or more than the language itself. The concept is pretty compelling, really - a compiler/language that actively presents you from shooting yourself in the foot, which C++ allows you to do if you step outside of "voluntary best practices", and which C seems to gleefully encourage with the slightest misstep. And all this while still achieving the fantastic run-time efficiency of a natively compiled language. What's not to love?
Re:Wait a second... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think in some ways, it's perhaps because people love the idea of Rust as much or more than the language itself. The concept is pretty compelling, really - a compiler/language that actively presents you from shooting yourself in the foot, which C++ allows you to do if you step outside of "voluntary best practices", and which C seems to gleefully encourage with the slightest misstep.
I think the key is, almost no one has come out of school in the past 10 years or so and gone into low-level programming. People get taught Java and web programming, and get jobs doing that. So most of the people who would actually be choosing between C, C++ or Rust for actual work have already spent a decade or two learning all the ins and out of C or C++. Those "voluntary best practices" are second nature. The days when the average development experience with C or C++ was less than 5 years was long past.
So, Rust solves a problem that only exists in principle. If you're on a team with an average of say 15 years working in C++, all the gotchas and footguns of that language don't actually bother anyone any more. It's the devil you know.
Re: (Score:2)
So, Rust solves a problem that only exists in principle.
I think it's worse than that. Not only does it solve a problem that's already been solved (for those who program with care, at least), but it introduces a whole raft of new problems. Last time I looked (which admittedly was a while ago), nobody could work out how to do a GUI in Rust. If the language experts have trouble working out how to make the language do routine things, adoption is going to be a problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Hmm, people do GUIs in C quite often. A few minor components that implement some object abstraction method and you can go far. So if Rust can't do what C can...
Re: (Score:2)
Only masochists or worse would program a GUI in C, instead of C++.
Re: (Score:2)
If it is any harder using C, then you probably shouldn't be touching it anyways. Use something higher level that you'll understand more of.
Re: (Score:2)
20 years or so ago, I wrote a reasonably large GUI toolkit for X11 in C. It worked out great. The code base was neat as a pin and trivial to use. Using C++ would have added quite a bit of unnecessary complexity.
I'd say that only a masochist or worse would use C++ in place of C.
Re: (Score:2)
X11 is hard to program, so your claim: codebase neat etc. makes no sense.
I programmed on SUN S OpenLook - simply a horrible API.
Re: (Score:2)
Except that it's not that difficult.
Re: (Score:2)
(for those who program with care, at least)
Well, that changes everything. That leaves the problem completely unsolved.
nobody could work out how to do a GUI in Rust.
They've been making a web browser with it since 2012: Servo [servo.org] A "while ago" indeed...