Ask HN: Why Rust is becoming popular?

3 pointsgilgamesh36y ago8 comments

In the recent times, Rust is becoming very popular, and used more and more by people and companies, but why? What is the pros and cons of Rust? Rust does not even have a spec.

8 comments

topspin6y ago

Having a "spec" is not a prerequisite to popularity. Perhaps you believe it should be, but it is not.

Rust is effective, reasonably well documented, fully open and delivers something novel; bare metal performance with low defects in a practical language. I find no surprise that this has led to popularity. Just the idea of it was popular before people could really get their hands on it.

watergatorman6y ago

Rust popular?

Tiobe language rankings for May 2019:

Rust is ranked 34th at 0.335%, below Lisp and Prolog. Go is ranked 19th at 1.114%. C is ranked 2nd at 14.233%

Rust does not have a stable, standard BNF grammar specification. The language reference document for Rust has 33 or 34 unspecified missing language definitions [see "FIXME" sections].

vorg6y ago

Even if the Tiobe rankings said Rust was popular, it wouldn't mean much. Their May 2019 rankings also say Apache Groovy has risen from #91 to #17 over the past 12 months, which is clearly wrong. Those rankings are being fiddled with via search engines such as Baidu.

wmf6y ago

It's both safe and very efficient (no GC, zero-cost abstractions). There aren't many languages in that niche so Rust has taken it over.

sidcool6y ago

I am not sure if it's already famous. What got my attention was that it simplified systems programing. I don't have a C/C++ background, Rust was my first attempt to learn a low level language. It's been rewarding so far.

oconnor6636y ago

There are many safe languages, but Rust is the only safe language with destructors.

rurban6y ago

This is untrue. Rust is unsafe in all aspects they are claiming to be safe. It's better than C, C++, or Go, but still type unsafe, memory unsafe and concurrency unsafe.

They are popular due to the wrong hype around their "safeties", and having a healthy community.

oconnor6636y ago

If you're concerned about the definition of a word, please go ahead and say what definition you prefer, rather than just saying "I disagree."

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

8 comments

topspin6y ago

Having a "spec" is not a prerequisite to popularity. Perhaps you believe it should be, but it is not.

watergatorman6y ago

Rust popular?

Tiobe language rankings for May 2019:

Rust is ranked 34th at 0.335%, below Lisp and Prolog. Go is ranked 19th at 1.114%. C is ranked 2nd at 14.233%

Rust does not have a stable, standard BNF grammar specification. The language reference document for Rust has 33 or 34 unspecified missing language definitions [see "FIXME" sections].

vorg6y ago

wmf6y ago

It's both safe and very efficient (no GC, zero-cost abstractions). There aren't many languages in that niche so Rust has taken it over.

sidcool6y ago

oconnor6636y ago

There are many safe languages, but Rust is the only safe language with destructors.

rurban6y ago

This is untrue. Rust is unsafe in all aspects they are claiming to be safe. It's better than C, C++, or Go, but still type unsafe, memory unsafe and concurrency unsafe.

They are popular due to the wrong hype around their "safeties", and having a healthy community.

oconnor6636y ago

If you're concerned about the definition of a word, please go ahead and say what definition you prefer, rather than just saying "I disagree."

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse