Comment by steveklabnik
3 years ago
People used to say "when people are forced to use Rust at their job, they'll start hating it, only hobbyists use it and that's why it's so beloved." Do you really consider people learning Rust on the job to be "Rust adopters" who are partisan? Is anyone who ever uses Rust a "Rust adopter" who is unable to give an unbiased opinion? Who would be able to give that opinion, in your view?
People who are adopting Rust now at their jobs are in most majority people who are so keen on using Rust to push it into organizational adoption. Most companies don't yet have legacy Rust codebases on which people are told to work, but instead choose to work on.
This creates a self-selection, where Rust lovers work on Rust projects and report utopian happy-go-lucky times. It's normal for most technologies.
Do you think all 1,000 people that Google referenced here are people who are pushing it into organizational adoption?
It seems likely that the overwhelming majority of those 1000 people are pushing it into organizational adoption. Rust is not used enough yet that anyone will be forced to use it. Older C++ programmers at Google who are uninterested in moving aren't doing Rust.
As a parallel. A team using Scala at Amazon likely uses it because everyone (let's say 90%) was on board. It's just not something you force on your team unless there is existing interest.
Finally (an perhaps more importantly), the parent comment also mentioned older codebases. It does not seem likely anyone of those 1000 is currently doing maintenance so much as completely new projects/features. This tends to be work software developers enjoy more irrespective of language. So if you were pulled from maintenance in C++ to work on something new in Rust I'm pretty sure you'll say Rust is great just because you feel more productive.
3 replies →
Going by stackoverflow surveys, the majority of younger engineers would be happier to see it implemented than not, regardless of whether they've even used the language before.
2 replies →
Mostly? Yes. Google has more than 120.000 engineers. Those 1000 are less than 1% of engineers. It's like having one Rust dude in a 100 person company.
Most of people work in other languages.
3 replies →
> Do you really consider people learning Rust on the job to be "Rust adopters" who are partisan?
Not necessarily, but it seems not unlikely.
> Is anyone who ever uses Rust a "Rust adopter" who is unable to give an unbiased opinion?
It’s still a relatively new and niche language, so, yes.
> Who would be able to give that opinion, in your view?
Nobody, and maybe that’s my real point, which is why I’d like some metrics to supplement the anecdotes. This especially applies to Rust, but I think also applies to any language.
Note that I don’t mean to imply that there isn’t value in anecdotes. There is.
I agree the post could include more concrete metrics than self-assessment, but more than 1000 data points, even self-assessment data points, are usually not called anecdotes.
> Nobody, and maybe that’s my real point
To be honest, this is what I've taken away from this conversation so far: it doesn't seem like anything will satisfy your desires here.
> which is why I’d like some metrics to supplement the anecdotes
This conversation started with you not liking that the measure of quality is subjective, which is fine. How would you objectively measure code quality though? What metrics would you have preferred to see, other than the ones in this post?
I’m confused by your line of questioning. Why do you think I can’t be satisfied?
I don’t have a problem with this Google poll. I think it is valuable.
What would satisfy my desires is exactly what I stated in my original comment: something more objective, like defect rates of Rust code bases compared to non-Rust ones. Metrics like these have their owns problems, but would be a nice supplement to the opinion-based poll.
Neither the objective metrics, nor the opinion poll can provide a complete picture, and neither is a substitute for the other. Both would be awesome.
1 reply →
> As an engineering manager...
> unbiased opinion
If the engineering manager after putting so much effort into switching to Rust, and trying to convince upper levels, putting their head at risk and after busting balls for months to make everyone learn Rust, comes into the office one day and asks if we love Rust, we the 77% that want to keep our jobs would answer "OF COURSE WE DO!!!!! COULDN'T BE HAPPIER!!!", with a big smile.
This hasn't been my experience at all.
Me and all the other developers I know complain endlessly about the tools we're forced to use. We complain to anyone patient enough to listen, including all the engineering managers. No one I know ever got fired or laid off for this.