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Comment by Bartweiss | Hacker News Reader

> Even if Rust is much harder than alternatives instead of just different, and even if that's inherent in borrow checking, it's not clear that it's still not worth it in the long run.

One obvious argument is that Rust frontloads its difficulty. It's a terrible tool for most 30 line tasks, simply because the majority of your work will go into arguing with the compiler. But that's true of a great many tools - if there's an adequate payoff in safety and comprehensibility at scale, they can still be worthwhile.

That doesn't solve the learning-and-usage problem, though. Most of us are aware that the explosion of dangerous-at-scale tools like Javascript is largely because no one adopts a language that's unfriendly until you reach enterprise sizes. Even if Rust is "worth it", it's unlikely to catch on while the learning experience feels like pulling teeth.

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> It's a terrible tool for most 30 line tasks, simply because the majority of your work will go into arguing with the compiler.

This arguing with the compiler is really only while you are learning Rust and it's nuances. For me the first two weeks were this way, then I started thinking more in Rust terms. Now I rarely deal with the borrow checker at all, but I do end up in some complex type situations.

You're spot on with the frontloads difficulty. Honestly though, I can't think of any language that I've learned that in under a few weeks I knew how to properly do things in the language.

Python was this way for me. My code looked like C when I started with it, and then I learned after a few weeks about 'with' and 'yield' and started writing real code.

Rust is worth the initial investment, but the first two weeks will require some perseverance.

I think the difference is that while you are coding Python in a C style the code is working. The front loaded nature of Rust means that you are in a constant fight to get something to run.

Yes, and I understand how frustrating it can be, I had to learn it, too. My only point is that after you spend the time with it, the cognitive load becomes a lot less and you've learned some new things about programming at the same time.

I believe this. However, my concern is that the number of people willing to make it through that learning curve is small and will limit the adoption of Rust.

I'm hoping that things like the Rust Language Server and it's integration into some of the IDE's out there will help with the initial learning curve; already the rustc error output is a million times better than when I started with it.

I definitely share your concern; for me, Rust was like putting on a glove perfectly shaped for my hand. It works and prevents every basic pattern that it took 10 years to learn and start applying to all my code thereafter. If I had Rust all those years ago, it would have saved me a ton of time... but I probably would have turned my nose up at it, b/c I wouldn't have had the experience to understand what it was saving me from.

So yes, I want the learning curve to be lower, but not at the expense of losing all of the safety it brings to developing fast and reliable software.

Have they thought about allowing code to work by warning and elevating the scope so you can quickly get the procedural work done and then attack the memory usage?

I've been thinking about a good answer to this, but I don't know what it would look like. Code looks so different when you need to be concerned about mutable vs. immutable borrows. For example you might want to iterate over a list perform an action and then delete items after doing work. This needs to be broken into two blocks, one that does the iteration and then a second block to remove any elements that no longer belong.

That's an example of just two blocks, but if it's deeper structures then ignoring this until the end could cause you to go back and restructure significant sections of code to make it abide by the mutability rules.

The process I use to stay productive, is to write small blocks of code, write a unit test for it, compile, and then move on. That way I don't build up a ton of compiler debt...

I've been writing Rust solutions for two years now, and I do not feel like I am in a 'constant fight' to get something to run. That only happened for the first two or so weeks as I was learning Rust.

> This arguing with the compiler is really only while you are learning Rust and it's nuances. For me the first two weeks were this way, then I started thinking more in Rust terms. Now I rarely deal with the borrow checker at all, but I do end up in some complex type situations.

It just means you've learned to head off problems before they occur, that does not mean the problems you're heading off should be there.

"One obvious argument is that Rust frontloads its difficulty. It's a terrible tool for most 30 line tasks, simply because the majority of your work will go into arguing with the compiler. "

It does. Ada did too with people saying same stuff. Once they got used to it, they swore by Ada since their stuff usually worked after they got it past compiler. I also add that the alternative to Rust for GC-free safety of heap code is essentially separation (VCC) or matching logic (KCC). That's probably much harder for average programmer to work with than structuring stuff to get through borrow checker easily. Cyclone and then Rust were huge steps up on dynamic, memory safety given they're accessible to people who don't know formal verification.

That's the comparison people keep leaving off griping about borrow checker. I think Rust looks a lot better when one adds it. Still a headache but good in relative way.

My observation is that that's not quite true. It's fine for smaller tasks, but that mushy middle where you're discovering the parameters and outlines of a problem can be painful. Looser (note that I explicitly don't say "better" or "worse") languages give you more leeway to play around and discover how the problem is structured.

I can easily slap out a 30-line program and have it compile and work on the first try with Rust, guaranteed. No competent Rust developer has issues writing solutions in Rust. Nobody but newcomers are 'arguing with the compiler'.

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