It seems like just yesterday I was getting all misty-eyed over losing my friend the `~` sigil.
rust-story builds on 1.0, though, so I think I'll be able to forgive you. ;^)
Congrats on the release!
rust-story builds on 1.0, though, so I think I'll be able to forgive you. ;^)
Congrats on the release!
Before that, so many sigils in Rust scared me and kept me from learning it. Rust still has a bit many sigils nowadays, but it's definitely cleaner than before!
I had just started seriously learning rust a few months before they started moving owned pointers into `std`.
So I felt somewhat betrayed by the removal of the sigils. It seemed like all the hard work I had spent learning the various pointer types would end up being useless!
Of course that fear was ungrounded. I very quickly came to understand that what I had actually spent time learning was ownership; and _that knowledge_ is still perfectly relevant, even today in rust 1.0.
All that was really changing was the removal of some arcane syntax which had only served as a stumbling block in my quest to learn Rust.
I always joke about this being "programmer Stockholm syndrome": When you've mastered something that's actually not good at all, don't want that time and effort to have been for nothing, and become a champion for crap. It happens a lot and usually unintentionally - the champion feels genuine joy about the intricacies of what they're pushing and just wants to share it with others. You can see this happening a lot around poorly thought-through and/or overly complex technologies.
This is why Rust's progressive trimming and slimming over the last 1-2 years has been really impressive and gratifying to watch - it really takes a lot to reevaluate and let go. Critics will point out that Rust still is plenty complex, of course, and I think that's healthy skepticism too.
There was also just a sense of "OK, I get what these things do, but when should I us an @ vs an ~ vs a & in my API", and now I feel like it's much more clear what you use the different reference types for.