Comment by woodruffw
2 months ago
AFAICT, lacking a (good) standard HTTP library is kind of the norm in popular languages. Python, Ruby, Rust, etc. all either have a lackluster standard one or are missing one. I think it sits between two many decision pressures for most languages: there are a _lot_ of different RFCs both required and implied, lots of different idioms you could pick for making requests, lots of different places to draw the line on what to support, etc.
The notable exception is Go, which has a fantastic one. But Go is pretty notable for having an incredible standard library in general.
I thought Rust’s got a very small standard library, only focusing on things that must be in a standard library, mainly primitives or things which require co-operation with the underlying OS (e.g. thread and process management)? That’s completely opposite of Python’s “batteries included” approach.
Sure, I'm not making a categorical argument about big vs. small stdlibs. I'm just noting that "a good default HTTP library" is in fact kind of unusual, whether or not the language is batteries-included or not.
(As an outsider I had the impression that Go's net/http was good, but a lot of people in this thread are complaining about it as well. So it may be 0-4 instead of 1-3).
Is Rust popular? It's popular among HN users, and among certain other bubbles, but can it be called generally popular? Ruby sure can't be.
It's popular enough to be worth using as a datapoint. What's the point of the question?
I don't think it is worth using as a datapoint. Webdev is simply not what Rust was made for. It'd be somewhat like PHP having inline assembly.
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