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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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[–] solrize 7 points 1 year ago

In purely practical terms, Rust gives more precise resource control (deterministic memory management instead of garbage collection). In language geek terms, Rust has a more precise type system that lets you capture and enforce program invariants at compile time, in ways that Go doesn't. That makes refactoring more reliable among other things. Is it worth it? That's a variant of the age old debate between static and dynamic type systems.

I would say language theory is an important branch of CS, that anyone trying to be a strong programmer should know something about, just like they should know how the quicksort algorithm works or that the halting problem is undecidable. If Rust isn't to your fancy, you might try Haskell, which has a similar (maybe even fancier) type system, but is garbage collected and has a different execution model. Try learnyouahaskell.com for a good tutorial.

Disclosure: I use Haskell but for now haven't yet used Rust. Rust is interesting, I just haven't gotten to it yet. I do like Ada.