To the creators of Rust

community
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I gotta say, I'm pretty speechless today. I had heard about this language called Rust probably about two years ago but at that point, I had no usage for it.

I've programmed in C, C++, PHP, Python, JavaScript, C#, x86-64 assembly, though I'm most comfortable with C.

In my line of work, I'm often performing tasks which are extremely demanding on the memory and CPU cores. For this reason, I've never really been able to get into a "higher level" language seriously.

At work right now, one of the limitations that I have to work with is time - I write small utility programs for specific tasks, often involving tons of string or binary parsing and processing, or writing raw bytes to files or memory. Typically, I'd reach for C or Python. The problem with C is it is very very cumbersome (compared to other newer languages) to work with strings in. Python has what I'm looking for in terms of development speed, but is far far too lackluster in the performance category, especially with the Global Interpreter Lock.

Being most comfortable with C but having knowledge of Python and JavaScript, I gotta say, Rust is like the best of all worlds here... It has the higher-level construct stuff that makes writing fun, efficient and safer, but has the raw performance of a C compiler which is amazing.

But even past that, I gotta say - Cargo and most importantly, the documentation here is completely outstanding. I read a large portion of "The Rust Book" in just 1 day - and it was probably the easiest programming language read I've ever read, including from books I've paid upwards of $60 for.

On top of that, the constructs are intuitive, refreshing, helpful, relieving, and the rest of the documentation is straightforward.

I don't know what else to say other than I've never learned a language in a day or two and implemented the first iteration of a powerful program this quickly and without error.

I've known Python for years and know other programmers who have as well.. Nearly every time I try to work with that language, I'm having ridiculous version issues, libraries with syntax errors, trouble with pip, etc...

I knew Rust for a couple of hours and I got a task done quicker than I could with a language that I've known for years... And that task was done much more efficiently.

Right now I'm thinking that this language may have been created by the smartest people on the planet. Programming is fun again!

Thank you and I'm very happy to be here.

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Thanks for articulating my exact feelings :+1:

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:heavy_plus_sign:

The fact that there's an official book which you can read as a tutorial and be actually able to just write Rust code afterwards was shocking for me as well!

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You've expressed exactly the way I feel about Rust when I "found" it. I'm a self-taught software developer who has worked across multiple language for nearly 25 years and to me Rust is a breath of fresh air. It is the only thing I've seen in my career that is truly solving real-world development challenges while pushing the envelope of capability in an efficient and thoughtful manner.

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To be honest I've been bumping into Rust's limitations quite a few times recently, and getting frustrated that xyz hasn't been implemented yet (a bunch of small stuff with the macro and type systems; nothing that's not fixable). So it's nice to have a reminder of how far this community project has come!

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Keep in mind that Rust 1.0 only turned 3 this year. For a language that young and constantly growing and changing it's quite a good progress. I think now more than ever(and I actually see it) the community should be formed with same mind set and the technical part is not enough anymore. That's one of the things I love about :crab: - Our Community

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I see that you like Rust (very) much. But every language have its drawbacks - maybe could you list theme here?

I am very new to Rust and I know almost nothing about it, but few things bring me to this language. I wanted something comparable to C and C++ in terms of speed, but more safe. I have heard that concurrency in Rust is well designed also. The number of web frameworks (in language which is mainly OS language and still new) is impressive.

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maybe ask @dhardy as he stated that he has been bumping into rust's limitations lately. I'm still too new but also keep in mind that I need to do a bunch of low-level stuff and all I really need is basic stuff like file i/o, concurrency, and some http interfaces..

@elpiel 100% agree, I love the community around Rust as well! First time I picked up a t-shirt and stickers within a week of starting a new language and it was for a reason.

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As we all know - choose your tools accordingly to the problem you're trying to solve.
There are probably a lot of pros and cons as well as drawbacks and limitations, but keep in mind that the language is also changing a lot + the Ecosystem around it.

Conclusion: It's not that easy to just list them all.

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Your review has left me speechless because you have accurately summed up my experience so far.

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A post was split to a new topic: Rust for Raspberry Pi / IOT