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Why should I use rust (as a Go enthusiast)? (programming.dev)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I am not hating on Rust. I am honestly looking for reasons why I should learn and use Rust. Currently, I am a Go developer. I haven’t touched any other language for years, except JavaScript for occasional front end work and other languages for OSS contributions.

After working with almost every mainstream language over the years and flitting between them on a whim, I have fallen in love with Go. It feels like ‘home’ to me - it’s comfortable and I enjoy working with it and I have little motivation to use anything else. I rage every time I get stuck working with JavaScript because dependency management is pure hell when dealing with the intersection of packages and browsers - by contrast, dependency management is a breeze with Go modules. I’ll grant that it can suck when using private packages, but I everything I work on is open.

Rust is intriguing. Controlling the lifecycle of variables in detail appeals to me. I don’t mind garbage collectors but Rust’s approach seems far more elegant. The main issue for me is the syntax, specifically generic types, traits, and lifetimes. It looks just about as bad as C++'s template system, minus the latter’s awful compiler errors. After working almost exclusively with Go for years, reading it seems unnecessarily demanding. And IMO the only thing more important than readability is whether it works.

Why should I learn and use rust?

P.S.: I don’t care about political stuff like “Because Google sucks”. I see no evidence that Google is controlling the project. And I’m not interested in “Because Go sucks” opinions - it should be obvious that I disagree.

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[–] asdfasdfasdf 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I've used Rust professionally for five years now, and it is too hard to give a full answer in any single comment. There are so many reasons. You are right, it is a lot more elegant. You can do things with its type system which you can't in any other mainstream language, because of ownership. It's really a life changing experience, so I'd suggest you just try it out, build a project in it, and see what it's like. You won't regret it.

I strongly disagree about generics / syntax. IMO they're fine and you'll learn to love them.

The high level answer I'll give is that Rust is a language that is designed from the ground up to not make many sacrifices. You can use it for systems programming where you can't use a garbage collector, or for high level stuff like an API server. It feels high level while also being as low level as you need it to. Its errors are absolutely fantastic. Same with the tooling and package manager.

You should really just see for yourself.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I strongly disagree about generics / syntax. IMO they’re fine and you’ll learn to love them.

True! Rust's design is very orthogonal. The generics, lifetimes and other similar features work very well together.