Rust contributor appreciation thread

Most of the posts on this forum revolve around problems. On the one hand, that's necessary for gaining insights. And while the Rust community does a great job at keeping negativity at a minimum, I think some additional positivity won't hurt.

So I would like to take some time just to thank people, and invite you all to do the same.

The most important thing first: Thank you to everyone who contributed to Rust. You all are creating the awesome cultural phenomenon that is Rust: the language, the code around it, the community etc. And while we might all discuss how to do this best, you're doing a great job. Rust is awesome, and that's thanks to you.

It's impossible to know of all the contributions, let alone list them. So even if you don't appear in this thread: You know who you are! (We others may not.)

To all reading this: If there is some aspect of the Rust language, crates, community etc. you are thankful for, post it here! I will add a few more specific posts myself. I expect this thread to be more about positivity than insight, but you never know... However, for discussing problems, I'd ask you to open another thread.

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A big thank you and kudos to the core and lang teams, listed here. I really appreciate the effort, expertise and thought you are putting into this project, and I am really happy with the direction in which you have taken this language (and are still taking it).
Regarding recent news, I am escpecially happy about impl Trait in return position (aka existential types). It really adds to the expressiveness of the language and is a feature I dearly missed before.

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Thank you to the cargo team and the cargo contributors for creating the package manager that enables us to be productive. It does a superb job, and most of the time, you don't even notice it because it Just Works.

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Besides Rust being a real joy to work in (just recently, I was coding something in my previously-favored-language lua and thought "man I wish I could do it the way I would in Rust now"), I'm especially thankfull for a community that made positivity a first-class target. Whoever had a hand in shaping that, or is part of that, has my thanks!

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A personal thanks to @chriskrycho for his New Rustacean podcast. It is insightful, interesting and delightful to listen to.

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I would first like to thank everyone that has contributed -- in any capacity -- to the creation of the Rust community and ecosystem -- from the core developers, up-to the average users of the language, and even to businesses that have supported some of the people and have embraced this new language.


I guess there are many particularities to be thankful of, thus I thought I'll focus on a few "minor" items, but which I consider to be incredibly useful:

  • the ability to create two different variables, in the same scope, which have the same identifier; (i.e. let x = <some expression>; let x = <some expression using x>; ...;
  • the ease with which conditional compilation can be integrated in one's code;
  • the ability to include external files as strings or byte arrays; (i.e. include_str and include_bytes);
  • the fact that every statement is in fact an expression; (i.e. let x = { ... } and let x = if { ... } else { ... };
  • the fact that the core language is kept "small", i.e. "without batteries"; and especially for the fact that one can choose to not use "system-dependent" features (i.e. one can use no_std);

And I'm sure there are countless other things that make Rust great I never thought about.

So thank's to all of you interested in and contributing to Rust!

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