Comment by UltraViolence

3 years ago

I believe Rust will ALWAYS be beneficial compared to MMM languages because it will save time in the long run.

Programs with Rust will always be rock-stable, unlike many C/C++ programs which are more like a house-of-cards.

11 comments

UltraViolence

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brabel  3 years ago

> Programs with Rust will always be rock-stable

How do you know that? Is there any data backing that up?

I've never seen any research showing that a programming language, no matter how strict (Haskell, Ada, Rust) actually improves the reliability of software, except for comparisons between memory-safe and non-memory-safe languages. It almost always goes down nearly entirely to development process and team skills/experience, showing anything else convincingly would be a huge breakthrough.

  • manholio  3 years ago

    Well, here's my point of anecdata: despite Python being a very productive language and very easy to use, despite it existing for more than three decades and being perhaps the most massively learned language by aspiring programmers today, you hardly see any stand-alone application written in it. I can name not a single application that I use on a daily basis written in Python. It seems it's strongly confined to the web-server, where the environments are well controlled via containers, runtime bugs impact a single page load and fixes can be applied continuously. People don't ship Python standalone apps.

    Based on the buggy and unstable Python desktop apps I have used, I have a strong suspicion that developing large applications in Python is strongly self-limiting after the initial sprint.

  • UltraViolence  3 years ago

    I'm speaking from my own experience here. I've tested a couple of Rust programs which were developed in relatively short order yet were quite complex (a Minecraft type game being one) and there wasn't even the slightest hint of instability.

    Some of my own Rust code is moderately complex but never showed any signs of instability during development. I often have crashes now and again with my C++ programs. Sure, I fix those afterwards but getting it flawless every time the first time is (for me at least) unheard of.

littlestymaar  3 years ago

I'd agree with that too, but that's just my point of view and I'd respect anyone else's sensible argument of the opposite.

But this article isn't that, and to make manual memory management more appealing they had to ridiculously inflate the issues that come with ownership-based memory management…

  • brabel  3 years ago

    I think it's you being biased against the article now. As I read it, it was pretty honest and really trying to find some sort of true, not just trying to bash Rust. Feels like Rust fans are very defensive against criticism of any sort, even when well intentioned as I think is the case here.