Comment by lpil
1 month ago
Multiple of such tools exist and have done for years. Serde isn’t a Rust-core project, and similarly the Gleam alternatives are not Gleam-core.
1 month ago
Multiple of such tools exist and have done for years. Serde isn’t a Rust-core project, and similarly the Gleam alternatives are not Gleam-core.
Rust has macros that make serde very convenient, which Gleam doesn't have.
Could you point to a solution that provides serde level of convenience?
Edit: The difference with generating code (like with Gleam) and having macros generate the code from a few tags is quite big. Small tweaks are immediately obvious in serde in Rust, but they drown in the noise in the complete serialization code like with the Gleam tools.
> Rust has macros that make serde very convenient, which Gleam doesn't have.
To be fair, Rust's proc macros are only locally optimal:
While they're great to use, they're only okay to program.
Your proc-macro needs to live in another crate, and writing proc macros is difficult.
Compare this to dependently typed languages og Zig's comptime: It should be easier to make derive(Serialize, Deserialize) as compile-time features inside the host language.
When Gleam doesn't have Rust's derivation, it leaves for a future where this is solved even better.
In Gleam code generators are most commonly used, similar to in C#, Go, or Elm.
Yes, my point is that it's not a good experience.
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