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Mozilla Programming

Rust Blog Touts 'What We Achieved' in 2017 (rust-lang.org) 153

An anonymous reader quotes the official Rust blog: Rust's development in 2017 fit into a single overarching theme: increasing productivity, especially for newcomers to Rust. From tooling to libraries to documentation to the core language, we wanted to make it easier to get things done with Rust. That desire led to a roadmap for the year, setting out 8 high-level objectives that would guide the work of the team. How'd we do? Really, really well.
Aaron Turon, part of the core developer team for Rust, wrote the blog post, and specifically touts this year's progress on lowering the learning curve with books and curriculum, as well as actual improvements in the language and a faster edit-compile-debug cycle. He also notes new support for Rust in IntelliJ and Atom (as well as preview versions for Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code) in 2017 -- and most importantly, mentoring. I'd like to specifically call out the leaders and mentors who have helped orchestrate our 2017 work. Leadership of this kind -- where you are working to enable others -- is hard work and not recognized enough. So let's hand it to these folks...! Technical leaders are an essential ingredient for our success, and I hope in 2018 we can continue to grow our leadership pool, and get even more done -- together.
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Rust Blog Touts 'What We Achieved' in 2017

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  • by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Saturday December 23, 2017 @12:00PM (#55796241)

    "Rust's development in 2017 fit into a single overarching theme: increasing productivity,"

    My 35 year old car is no newcomer to Rust, but it also overachieved lately.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 23, 2017 @12:04PM (#55796261)

    Praise Jesus for the creation of Rust: the most important innovation in the history of computer science. Until Rust appeared, it was impossible to create secure programs, because the concept of pointer and type safety was entirely unknown to the world. The only way forward to a better world is rewriting all existing software in Rust.

    In addition, the Rust community pioneered the idea of community behavioral standards, putting ethnic and sexual diversity in its proper place as the most important ingredient in programming language design. If Rust had existed in the 1950's, Alan Turing would still be alive today -- and he would be programming in Rust.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    The serious point is that it would be nice to have a new language without all the SJW bullshit. You know, just like we did in the old days.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 23, 2017 @12:25PM (#55796365)

    I looked into using Rust a little while ago. On the surface it sounded appealing. It sounded like it would give me a lot of what C++ offers, but without some of the headaches that C++ suffers from.

    To keep a long story short, Rust, as a language, did not meet my expectations. The syntax is C-like, but it's also quirky in some ways. The performance was mediocre. The borrow-checking approach to memory management is a pain in the bottom in practice, even after you understand it and have worked with it. There was only one compiler implementation, and I found it to be buggy and slow, even compared to a slow C++ compiler like GCC. The standard library was pretty bad, and the string handling was atrocious. Third-party libraries often didn't compile, and many were woefully incomplete. It was a really bad experience.

    But the worst part, in my opinion, was the Rust community. I've dealt with a lot of programming language communities over the decades, but Rust's was by far the worst I've ever experienced.

    The whole Rust Code of Conduct [rust-lang.org] thing is kind of weird. I mean, programming language communities got along just fine without codes of conduct for ages. At first I though it was just a symbolic thing, but I soon realized that the Rust Code of Conduct was much more than that. I'd classify it more as a religious text, or even a behavioral script. It was like the Rust community worshiped it. In my experience it turned what should have been friendly discussion among collaborating colleagues into a highly controlled, flow-chart-like, courtroom-like, overly-formal, totally-artificial, robotic-like ritual. You literally had to walk on eggshells the whole time, out of fear of accidentally violating the Rust Code of Conduct in some obscure and non-obvious way.

    The Rust Code of Conduct itself is contradictory. For example, there's a paragraph that says, "we don’t tolerate behavior that excludes people", yet that same paragraph starts with, "We will exclude you from interaction if ...". They basically would be violating their own Rust Code of Conduct when they try to uphold it!

    I later found out that they even have a Rust Moderation Team [rust-lang.org] that goes around and enforces the Rust Code of Conduct! I can't think of any other programming language community that I've dealt with that has a formally organized hit squad whose sole purpose is to take out community members who are deemed to be "undesirable". It's absurd. It's really, really absurd.

    Something else I found disturbing was the extreme leftism that permeated the community. Now I don't think that programming and politics really need to mix much. They're pretty separate, for the most part. But in my experience the Rust community was very heavily into promoting "diversity" and "tolerance" and all of those other left-wing buzzwords, even when they really had nothing to do with programming. It's like they're more focused on "social justice" than they are on creating a usable programming language.

    Another thing that bothered me was the smugness I kept encountering from Rust's contributors and supporters. They kept portraying Rust as being this great savior, when in my opinion it's rather mediocre, and actually has some pretty serious flaws and problems. If you questioned these Rust supporters, they would basically belittle and insult you, assuming they didn't try to censor you through down-modding or banning, if the discussion venue supported such things. I found it strange how they often ridiculed C++, yet when it came to the same functionality or features Rust was often much worse than C++.

    I've been programming for a long time, and I've used a lot of different programming languages, but my experience with Rust was perhaps the worst I've ever experienced. No programming language has left me more disappointed, and no programming language community has ever left me feeling more weirded out. In my o

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It's like a mirror. If you go in being an ass, demonstrating an unwillingness to do anything but snark or bash or otherwise unproductively complain, then yes: you will be disappointed when the Rust community tells you to piss off, albeit in a slightly kinder manner.

      I went in expecting a community of intolerant bigots after reading Slashdot's opinions, and found them to be a refreshing case of a community that's more interested in improving their product than it is in just fighting against the tides of troll

      • I dont care about community, I just want a language that is well documented and for which I can get help in stack overflow. C++ answers these requirements better than rust.

        • by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Saturday December 23, 2017 @03:13PM (#55797121)

          and for which I can get help in stack overflow.

          Use a language with tail call optimization and you won't need to get help in stack overflow.

          • I doubt anyone will catch the pun/joke ;)

            • The only thing preventing C from doing full tail call optimization is the "caller frees stack" instead of "callee frees stack" behavior. This, like buffer overflows, can be fixed by calling conventions.

              Dual stack callee freeing calling convention for the win!

              • Tail call optimization refers to optimization of recursive functions.
                The question if the caller or calee clears the stack has bottom line no influence.
                For C it is required that the callee clears it because of variable argument lists.
                On the other hand you could use the heap to transfer arguments, but that leaves the same fundamental problem.

                • by jeremyp ( 130771 )

                  Tail call optimization refers to optimization of recursive functions.

                  No it doesn't, it refers to the optimisation of tail calls. i.e. if the last thing a function does is call another function (or the same function again), it can replace the entire stack frame (except for the return address) with just the arguments for the new function and make a jump instead of a call. It doesn't have to be a recursive call at all.

                  That's not to say you can't implement tail call optimisation with C, you just have to be care

                  • Oh man are you nitpicking.
                    Do you have a single real world example where you can 'tail cal optimize' a non recursive function call?
                    Hu? It would require that the target function takes the same arguments in the same order.
                    And then you would not call it 'tail call optimization' even if it is the same thing.
                    I never heard about a compiler trying to optimize a JSR away for a JMP if the call is not a recursive one.

                    • Do you have a single real world example where you can 'tail cal optimize' a non recursive function call?

                      Finite state machines, for example. Or code in CPS form.

                      Hu? It would require that the target function takes the same arguments in the same order.

                      How did you arrive at that idea?

                      I never heard about a compiler trying to optimize a JSR away for a JMP if the call is not a recursive one.

                      Scheme implementations do this very regularly. In fact, the language spec requires that. Any implementation that doesn't do this is non-conforming.

                    • https://godbolt.org/g/bTeB37

                      Merry Christmas.

                • In my hypothetical calling convention, you can have a hidden parameter that says what is the length of the variable argument list. Also, as jeremyp replied to you, tail call optimization is not just for a function that calls itself, it should handle any call, including all sorts of dual recursions.

                  • It is only for recursion, does not matter if dual or single.
                    For other calls, there is nothing to optimize, they are basically 'automatically optimized'.

          • by jeremyp ( 130771 )

            Having tail call optimisation does not make you immune to stack overflow.

            Otherwise they wouldn't need the Haskell tag.

      • What I really don't get is why the Rust community, despite all of the focus it places on diversity and inclusion and tolerance and all of that, is mainly made up of white males in their 20s. There's nothing wrong with being white or being male or being in your 20s, of course. It's just odd to look through the list of contributors [github.com] and see one profile picture after another showing a white male in his 20s.

        I find it strange because all of the other programming language communities I've dealt with, especially on

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by gbjbaanb ( 229885 )

          Its a sickness of mind that has afflicted some people.

          An example: a while back there was a shop opening in part of London called"Best of British" that sold British tat that appealed to tourists mainly, nothing particularly extraordinary.,

          It was in the news because some people were complaining that the place was racist. The interviewed shop-owner told that middle class white people would come into the shop and shout abuse at him. He also told that foreign people would come into the shop and tell him how happ

        • by jeremyp ( 130771 )

          You're not comparing like with like.

          The list of contributors you posted is the list off people who have contributed to Rust itself. The Java community you talked about is the community of people that use Java as a tool in their programming work. You need to either compare the people who use Rust to the people who use Java or the people who contribute to the Rust Language to the people who contribute to the JDK and associated development tools.

    • by bigmacx ( 135216 )

      This^

      That is why I'm not learning Rust until I absolutely have to. The only "Rust" I care about is this one. https://rust.facepunch.com

      All it took for me to say no was the bizarre SJW + NewProgrammingLanguage BS. There's been a few articles where Rust contributors were "outed" for SJW violations OUTSIDE of any Rust development, contribution, or discussion environment. IIRC there was even a senior contributor or leader kicked out for it.

      I don't need ketchup with my eggs.

      So I hope very much so that the whole

      • by nnull ( 1148259 )
        I'll stick to Python. It equally hates everyone.
    • Rust: the scientology of programming?

    • by roca ( 43122 )

      I've been programming in Rust full-time for nearly two years and disagree entirely with everything in this statement. In particular, I have never had to give any thought to the code of conduct. But maybe that's because I'm not a troll.

    • Lots of rhetoric about language issues but no specifics.

    • by nnull ( 1148259 )
      It's mind blowing how such a community can even exist and function, but yet it does. I better watch what I say, I might offend someone and the dogma police will come after me.
    • I wonder what would happen if someone wrote an interactive website engine in Rust that was specifically targeted to support ISIS, Nazis, and the KKK?
    • To keep a long story short,...

      EPIC FAIL!

    • I find those on the GNU project far left yet no one will dare criticize them and have no problem using their products

  • Why do technology people and groups give foolish names like "Rust" to what they create?

    "Lisp" [wikipedia.org] is a speech impediment [wikipedia.org].

    "Gimp" [gimp.org] is a person who limps or is lame [dictionary.com].

    Why restrict technology names to only 1 alphabet? LaTeX [wikipedia.org] uses Greek letters, also, and requires two paragraphs in the Wikipedia article to explain the name.

    Or... Go with the flow? The next time you create open-source software, call it "Garbage"? Or "Feces"? Or maybe "Vomit"?
    • Why do technology people and groups give foolish names like "Rust" to what they create?

      You are welcome to come back and ask that question again if you ever create anything.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 23, 2017 @12:47PM (#55796471)
    • Thank you! I haven't laughed that hard since I spent an evening skimming David Hasselhoff reviews on Amazon. To me, this explains both why the language looks the way it looks and why it's so successful in cultivating armies of drones lobbying for it. The whole thing reads like a pile of AI-assistants having a discussion. I'm done with freaking hipster languages; Rust may be the worst offender right now, but they're all similar. Go, Swift, Julia; I've done deep dives into all of them and their communities a
      • Whoa man you remain cool with the kids today and hipsters for your language to take off. I mean just look at the trajedy of Erlang [youtube.com] and the technopsychobitch community that made it cool?

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Ada (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 23, 2017 @03:44PM (#55797247)

    Why do we compare Rust to C++? Shouldn't we compare it to Ada? I work on security in the auto industry. What is the point of Rust? I get how its better than C++ for security and safety, but how is it better than Ada? That's a far more fair comparison. Ada environments are more mature. The language has been used with great success in civilian avionics and DOD projects for decades. I've been trying to get people to think about Ada in automotive for years (and, with autonomous cars, there might be a very good justification finally for automotive software to be treated like civilian avionics software). No one in a mature industry like automotive is going to seriously consider Rust, but they might consider Ada. Why are we even talking about Rust? Is Ada not feminist enough!?...

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • God, i read the whole thing. I am now very used to this kind of discourse, so it's not surprising to me anymore. but it is pure Orwellian horror. I was expecting at least some level of 'debate' or disagreement at the madness of this, which more or less appears, usually. but no, not even that. scary. very scary.
    • Agreed, no deviation and no signs of human nature. Taken out of context I would have guessed it was an AI-joke. Much of the crap that trickles out from Google and Facebook has the same uncanny valley vibe to me.

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