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Sometimes, what you're doing is unsound and so it must be forbidden even if you can't intuitively see why yet. Rust's diagnostics often show you why.
However, sometimes (and for an experienced Rust developer this might start to happen more often than "Oh, actually that was dumb" type situations) the problem is that the Borrow Checker doesn't understand why it's fine. The diagnostic points you at something, and you say "Er, yeah, what's the problem?" and, sometimes, there wasn't really a problem.
Non-lexical lifetimes were a big improvement in Rust, improving the borrow checking analysis so that more cases which are correct were allowed by the checker.
Polonius is one thing intended to further improve upon this: https://github.com/rust-lang/polonius
> If you're going to do that, would you not be better saving all that time and code bloat (it's code you wrote that doesn't contribute to solving your problem) by just using a garbage collector from the outset?
I suspect a garbage collector would be pretty nice. However, I can't just list the features I want and get a language (unless I make it myself, which would take a lot of time). Currently, my imaginary perfect language would actually have a garbage collector, would be pretty similar to Standard ML, but would be more focused on arrays than lists, and would have value types --- in Standard ML I can't have a value array of records (structs in Rust/C++ parlance) --- they will be behind a pointer. And if I were to stick to the standard or make sure that my code compiles with other compilers than MLTon, then I can't even have a value array of 64-bit words, although I can have a value array of 63-bit words. This one bit may seem insignificant, but for certain algorithms it's a big complication. Powers of 2 simplify a lot of algorithms (and are "faster" to be a bit loose with the language). There are other features I'd like, but already this short list makes for a currently-non-existent language. OCaml and Haskell have similar problems to Standard ML.
At the same time Rust has great support for arrays, is expression-oriented, has sum types. Value types are the default. It generally ticks a lot of boxes I care about. I can't just go and say "now give me all that but with a GC" and have it appear before me.
Also, arenas I use are linked to logical portions of my programs. They are not contrivances that I had to think long and hard about. They don't waste my time really. I've spent 0 time thinking about how they should be organized.
Now the part where a GC would be helpful is a bit of a more liberal use of closures, and eliminating code noise coming from lifetime annotations such as "for<'a>". But I can live with the current state of affairs, if I get all the other benefits.
> If you're going to do that, would you not be better saving all that time and code bloat (it's code you wrote that doesn't contribute to solving your problem) by just using a garbage collector from the outset?
If anything, Rust is an asset for large teams of devs. Even though you may sometimes argue that a handful of C/C++ devs can keep their whole project in their heads and not make mistakes (although I think that's a stretch), the moment you get a large C/C++ team, weird hard-to-debug bugs coming from memory- and thread-safety issues start to creep in. There are other high-level languages, but Rust is the one with a combination of performance competitive with C++ and large ecosystem of libraries you can use. Examples of Rust projects with a large number of contributors facilitated by the language taking the fear of intractable bugs away:
- <https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep>
- <https://github.com/clap-rs/clap>
- <https://github.com/rayon-rs/rayon>
- <https://github.com/cloudflare/wrangler>
- <https://github.com/sharkdp/fd>
> If you're going to do that, would you not be better saving all that time and code bloat (it's code you wrote that doesn't contribute to solving your problem) by just using a garbage collector from the outset?
I suspect a garbage collector would be pretty nice. However, I can't just list the features I want and get a language (unless I make it myself, which would take a lot of time). Currently, my imaginary perfect language would actually have a garbage collector, would be pretty similar to Standard ML, but would be more focused on arrays than lists, and would have value types --- in Standard ML I can't have a value array of records (structs in Rust/C++ parlance) --- they will be behind a pointer. And if I were to stick to the standard or make sure that my code compiles with other compilers than MLTon, then I can't even have a value array of 64-bit words, although I can have a value array of 63-bit words. This one bit may seem insignificant, but for certain algorithms it's a big complication. Powers of 2 simplify a lot of algorithms (and are "faster" to be a bit loose with the language). There are other features I'd like, but already this short list makes for a currently-non-existent language. OCaml and Haskell have similar problems to Standard ML.
At the same time Rust has great support for arrays, is expression-oriented, has sum types. Value types are the default. It generally ticks a lot of boxes I care about. I can't just go and say "now give me all that but with a GC" and have it appear before me.
Also, arenas I use are linked to logical portions of my programs. They are not contrivances that I had to think long and hard about. They don't waste my time really. I've spent 0 time thinking about how they should be organized.
Now the part where a GC would be helpful is a bit of a more liberal use of closures, and eliminating code noise coming from lifetime annotations such as "for<'a>". But I can live with the current state of affairs, if I get all the other benefits.
> If you're going to do that, would you not be better saving all that time and code bloat (it's code you wrote that doesn't contribute to solving your problem) by just using a garbage collector from the outset?
If anything, Rust is an asset for large teams of devs. Even though you may sometimes argue that a handful of C/C++ devs can keep their whole project in their heads and not make mistakes (although I think that's a stretch), the moment you get a large C/C++ team, weird hard-to-debug bugs coming from memory- and thread-safety issues start to creep in. There are other high-level languages, but Rust is the one with a combination of performance competitive with C++ and large ecosystem of libraries you can use. Examples of Rust projects with a large number of contributors facilitated by the language taking the fear of intractable bugs away:
- <https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep>
- <https://github.com/clap-rs/clap>
- <https://github.com/rayon-rs/rayon>
- <https://github.com/cloudflare/wrangler>
- <https://github.com/sharkdp/fd>
> If you're going to do that, would you not be better saving all that time and code bloat (it's code you wrote that doesn't contribute to solving your problem) by just using a garbage collector from the outset?
I suspect a garbage collector would be pretty nice. However, I can't just list the features I want and get a language (unless I make it myself, which would take a lot of time). Currently, my imaginary perfect language would actually have a garbage collector, would be pretty similar to Standard ML, but would be more focused on arrays than lists, and would have value types --- in Standard ML I can't have a value array of records (structs in Rust/C++ parlance) --- they will be behind a pointer. And if I were to stick to the standard or make sure that my code compiles with other compilers than MLTon, then I can't even have a value array of 64-bit words, although I can have a value array of 63-bit words. This one bit may seem insignificant, but for certain algorithms it's a big complication. Powers of 2 simplify a lot of algorithms (and are "faster" to be a bit loose with the language). There are other features I'd like, but already this short list makes for a currently-non-existent language. OCaml and Haskell have similar problems to Standard ML.
At the same time Rust has great support for arrays, is expression-oriented, has sum types. Value types are the default. It generally ticks a lot of boxes I care about. I can't just go and say "now give me all that but with a GC" and have it appear before me.
Also, arenas I use are linked to logical portions of my programs. They are not contrivances that I had to think long and hard about. They don't waste my time really. I've spent 0 time thinking about how they should be organized.
Now the part where a GC would be helpful is a bit of a more liberal use of closures, and eliminating code noise coming from lifetime annotations such as "for<'a>". But I can live with the current state of affairs, if I get all the other benefits.
> If you're going to do that, would you not be better saving all that time and code bloat (it's code you wrote that doesn't contribute to solving your problem) by just using a garbage collector from the outset?
If anything, Rust is an asset for large teams of devs. Even though you may sometimes argue that a handful of C/C++ devs can keep their whole project in their heads and not make mistakes (although I think that's a stretch), the moment you get a large C/C++ team, weird hard-to-debug bugs coming from memory- and thread-safety issues start to creep in. There are other high-level languages, but Rust is the one with a combination of performance competitive with C++ and large ecosystem of libraries you can use. Examples of Rust projects with a large number of contributors facilitated by the language taking the fear of intractable bugs away:
- <https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep>
- <https://github.com/clap-rs/clap>
- <https://github.com/rayon-rs/rayon>
- <https://github.com/cloudflare/wrangler>
- <https://github.com/sharkdp/fd>
> If you're going to do that, would you not be better saving all that time and code bloat (it's code you wrote that doesn't contribute to solving your problem) by just using a garbage collector from the outset?
I suspect a garbage collector would be pretty nice. However, I can't just list the features I want and get a language (unless I make it myself, which would take a lot of time). Currently, my imaginary perfect language would actually have a garbage collector, would be pretty similar to Standard ML, but would be more focused on arrays than lists, and would have value types --- in Standard ML I can't have a value array of records (structs in Rust/C++ parlance) --- they will be behind a pointer. And if I were to stick to the standard or make sure that my code compiles with other compilers than MLTon, then I can't even have a value array of 64-bit words, although I can have a value array of 63-bit words. This one bit may seem insignificant, but for certain algorithms it's a big complication. Powers of 2 simplify a lot of algorithms (and are "faster" to be a bit loose with the language). There are other features I'd like, but already this short list makes for a currently-non-existent language. OCaml and Haskell have similar problems to Standard ML.
At the same time Rust has great support for arrays, is expression-oriented, has sum types. Value types are the default. It generally ticks a lot of boxes I care about. I can't just go and say "now give me all that but with a GC" and have it appear before me.
Also, arenas I use are linked to logical portions of my programs. They are not contrivances that I had to think long and hard about. They don't waste my time really. I've spent 0 time thinking about how they should be organized.
Now the part where a GC would be helpful is a bit of a more liberal use of closures, and eliminating code noise coming from lifetime annotations such as "for<'a>". But I can live with the current state of affairs, if I get all the other benefits.
> If you're going to do that, would you not be better saving all that time and code bloat (it's code you wrote that doesn't contribute to solving your problem) by just using a garbage collector from the outset?
If anything, Rust is an asset for large teams of devs. Even though you may sometimes argue that a handful of C/C++ devs can keep their whole project in their heads and not make mistakes (although I think that's a stretch), the moment you get a large C/C++ team, weird hard-to-debug bugs coming from memory- and thread-safety issues start to creep in. There are other high-level languages, but Rust is the one with a combination of performance competitive with C++ and large ecosystem of libraries you can use. Examples of Rust projects with a large number of contributors facilitated by the language taking the fear of intractable bugs away:
- <https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep>
- <https://github.com/clap-rs/clap>
- <https://github.com/rayon-rs/rayon>
- <https://github.com/cloudflare/wrangler>
- <https://github.com/sharkdp/fd>
> If you're going to do that, would you not be better saving all that time and code bloat (it's code you wrote that doesn't contribute to solving your problem) by just using a garbage collector from the outset?
I suspect a garbage collector would be pretty nice. However, I can't just list the features I want and get a language (unless I make it myself, which would take a lot of time). Currently, my imaginary perfect language would actually have a garbage collector, would be pretty similar to Standard ML, but would be more focused on arrays than lists, and would have value types --- in Standard ML I can't have a value array of records (structs in Rust/C++ parlance) --- they will be behind a pointer. And if I were to stick to the standard or make sure that my code compiles with other compilers than MLTon, then I can't even have a value array of 64-bit words, although I can have a value array of 63-bit words. This one bit may seem insignificant, but for certain algorithms it's a big complication. Powers of 2 simplify a lot of algorithms (and are "faster" to be a bit loose with the language). There are other features I'd like, but already this short list makes for a currently-non-existent language. OCaml and Haskell have similar problems to Standard ML.
At the same time Rust has great support for arrays, is expression-oriented, has sum types. Value types are the default. It generally ticks a lot of boxes I care about. I can't just go and say "now give me all that but with a GC" and have it appear before me.
Also, arenas I use are linked to logical portions of my programs. They are not contrivances that I had to think long and hard about. They don't waste my time really. I've spent 0 time thinking about how they should be organized.
Now the part where a GC would be helpful is a bit of a more liberal use of closures, and eliminating code noise coming from lifetime annotations such as "for<'a>". But I can live with the current state of affairs, if I get all the other benefits.
> If you're going to do that, would you not be better saving all that time and code bloat (it's code you wrote that doesn't contribute to solving your problem) by just using a garbage collector from the outset?
If anything, Rust is an asset for large teams of devs. Even though you may sometimes argue that a handful of C/C++ devs can keep their whole project in their heads and not make mistakes (although I think that's a stretch), the moment you get a large C/C++ team, weird hard-to-debug bugs coming from memory- and thread-safety issues start to creep in. There are other high-level languages, but Rust is the one with a combination of performance competitive with C++ and large ecosystem of libraries you can use. Examples of Rust projects with a large number of contributors facilitated by the language taking the fear of intractable bugs away:
- <https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep>
- <https://github.com/clap-rs/clap>
- <https://github.com/rayon-rs/rayon>
- <https://github.com/cloudflare/wrangler>
- <https://github.com/sharkdp/fd>
>> Currently, my imaginary perfect language
None of us are getting a pony but that's not the point. The point is about selecting the right tool for the job.
For example, I see projects like axum[1] and wonder what people are using it for. In a PHP or Rails or Django stack, this is your nginx / apache layer. It's not business value code, it's the fast plumbing under your stack. What are people adding to the fast underlying plumbing layer that's giving them a competitive advantage? Or is it just cargo culting?
>> If anything, Rust is an asset for large teams of devs
I mean i only asked for an example of a small team performing magic thanks to rust so if there's no examples of that, i can be certain there's no examples of a large team performing magic thanks to rust!
[1] - https://github.com/tokio-rs/axum
I don't write web services, so it's hard for me to answer about axum, but if I were to speculate, I'd point out that PHP and Python have good integrations with tools like Apache, Ruby and nginx, while AOT compiled languages like C++ and Rust do not. There is CGI/FastCGI, but then you're parsing strings in true Unix fashion. When instead you use a web server library written in the language you use, you get to use a richer interface than functions [byte] -> [byte]. Go is nicer here since it has that in the standard library, but the idea is the same. But again: take that with a grain of salt --- I don't write web services.
> I mean i only asked for an example of a small team performing magic thanks to rust so if there's no examples of that, i can be certain there's no examples of a large team performing magic thanks to rust!
Well then, my examples of large teams should be sufficient. :)
Oh, and I've just remembered about this nice project: <https://github.com/firecracker-microvm/firecracker/>