> Also does every criticism of Rust have to have a prominent rebuttal?
Ha, sorry - I just really love Rust and want others to at least try it. I passed on it for _years_ because I thought like the OP (I used to code in Scala - I personally find THAT takes cognitive load to remember all the features. Rust feels small to me in comparison). Rust made me LOVE to code again and I just think there must be others out there who would feel the same if they just tried it.
I've written extensively in about 10 languages including the two you mentioned.
The current project I'm writing is migrating from Python to Rust. Python is not appropriate for large projects IMO and this one I wrote and am now porting to Rust is no exception. I do love Python for things up to 1000 lines or so, but after that you really need to test every single line, which is just a PITA. Mypy and now others help, but the typing isn't strong enough (although I've heard good things about some newer static typing addons).
I have a love/hate relationship with Go, but after I found Rust I'll never touch it again. It simply isn't expressive enough which leads to code that is overly verbose. The lack of a decent enum, repeating nil pointer mistake, verbose and error prone error handling, the constant copy/paste (now semi fixed with generics). I do love that it strives to be a simple language, but strangely the Rust tooling is much easier to use, so I'm not convinced it hits the mark. I do love how fast it compiles, and that is the one thing I hate about Rust.
Hm. Ok. Tell it to my previous company running 12 million LoC of Python.
It was easier to make changes there than in the 500k loc c++ system I maintained later.
Language has nothing to do with success of large projects, it’s everything around it. The culture of the company, the cicd systems, the release system, the build system, packaging, documentation , rollback, dependencies.
And for large projects, you’re rolling a lot of those yourself.
> Hm. Ok. Tell it to my previous company running 12 million LoC of Python.
Just because it can be done, doesn't mean it should be done. Just my opinion.
> It was easier to make changes there than in the 500k loc c++ system I maintained later.
I don't consider C++ a good language in any way, shape, or form. Now had you claimed the same about OCaml, Kotlin, etc. I would have a harder time believing it.
> Language has nothing to do with success of large projects,
Of course it does, but they do not exist in isolation either - it is just one component. There are many factors that would play in.
> it’s everything around it. The culture of the company, the cicd systems, the release system, the build system, packaging, documentation , rollback, dependencies.
My point about python is that it literally _requires_ you to make up for language deficiencies (aka dynamic typing + unchecked exceptions) by testing insane amounts to even make it possible. The things that work against you at large scale, work for you at tiny scale (aka scripts).
Heheh company with 14 million LoC barely had tests :)
I don’t know what kind of companies you worked on, but let me tell you that the code that runs the world comes from an era before tests, and some of it is too complicated to even be tested.
Test it in production is the only way for a lot of it. Then you need observability and easy ways of rolling back. That’s about it. Regardless of the language.
Read the latest google book — code architects at google I think it’s called ? Has a couple of great chapters on testing at scale and how unittests are useless
Ha, sorry - I just really love Rust and want others to at least try it. I passed on it for _years_ because I thought like the OP (I used to code in Scala - I personally find THAT takes cognitive load to remember all the features. Rust feels small to me in comparison). Rust made me LOVE to code again and I just think there must be others out there who would feel the same if they just tried it.
> Some people don't like Rust and that's okay.
Agreed, I'm sure it isn't for everyone.