So "Rust" means "Not JavaScript, and also a bunch of other constraints that mean that Rust is pretty much the only sensible choice."
Hum, no. The point is exactly that it would help a great deal if you moved to Python or Ruby or PHP.
Of course, Rust will give you even better memory efficiency. But Javascript is a particularly bad option there, and almost anything else would be an improvement. ("Almost", because if you push it enough and move to something like MathLab, you'll get worse results.)
Also, I don't know what Node is doing exactly, but if you take a lot of these dynamic languages and just fork them into multiple processes, which they still largely need to do to effectively use all the CPUs, you will generally see high per-process memory consumption just like Node. Any memory page that has a reference counter in it that is used by your code ends up Copied-On-Write in practice by every process in the steady state because all you need to do to end up copying the page is looking at any one reference it happens to contain in such a language. At least in my experience memory sharing gains were always minimal to effectively zero in such cases.
I have not found this to be generally true. It depends heavily on whether your code is limited by pure high level language code[1] and culture makes comparisons harder if you’re not just switching languages but also abstraction models and a big stack of optimizations. In theory Java beats Python but in practice I’ve seen multiple times where a Java program was replaced by Python seeing whole number multiple improvements in performance and reductions in memory consumption because what was really happening is that a bunch of super complicated, optimization-resistant Java framework code was being replaced with much simpler code which was easier to optimize. Node is closer to that side of Java culturally, I think in both cases because people reacted to the limited language functionality by building tons of abstractions which are still there even after the languages improved so even though it’s possible to do much better a lot of programmers are still pushing around a lot of code with 2000s-era workarounds buried in the middle.
1. I’m thinking of someone I saw spend months trying to beat Python in Go and eking out a 10% edge because the bulk of the work devolved to stdlib C code.
My guess is that if you were to rewrite this same app in straight Python (no Rust at all), it would probably already give you "Tier 3" performance.
But sure, I bet there are a bunch of use cases where nodejs would be faster than Python.
[1] https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#hw=ph&test=composite...
What leads you to believe in that?
There are some cases where C++ makes sense:
* You have a large existing C++ codebase you need to talk to via a large API surface (C++/Rust FFI is not great)
* You have a C++ library that's core to your project and doesn't have a good Rust alternative (i.e. Qt)
* You don't like learning (and are therefore in completely the wrong industry!)
It's a function of popularity and widespread use. The only languages that do not feature CVEs are the ones that are not used.
Eve Rust started to feature in CVEs, including memory safety problems in it's standard library. Somehow that fact is omitted from these discussions.
> (...) even experts failing to use those languages correctly (...)
I couldn't help noticing you felt the need to resort to weasel words like "correctly" to add color to an unsubstantiated personal assertion.
What's the best example you can come up with to support your opinion?
> C++ isn’t horrible but it’s harder to use, harder to find good developers (...)
This personal assertion is comical, as recruiters are systematically targeting C++ developers for Rust positions, and Rust is notoriously bad for newbies to onboard onto.
I'd prefer these debates were kept at an objective and substantiated level, but it seems that's too much to ask. It seems it's easier to throw unsubstantiated claims around and wait to see if half the bullshit sticks.
Also, it has so few footguns compared to C or C++ even modestly experienced developers can safely use it.
