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is Rust really that powerful / intuitive? (programming.dev)

submitted 1 year ago by thisisnotgoingwell@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev

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Hello all,

I am a data center engineer of about 8 years now. I've spent the last 3 years or so slowly learning Python(I say slowly not because of my effort, but because learning Python was actually very difficult for me.) I am not an expert in any way shape or form, I understand the concepts of OOP, inheritance, classes, functions, methods, etc and I have found that the python documentation that can be found within the language is usually enough for me to be able to write the programs that I want to write. Very rarely have I had to write programs that have to bypass the GIL, but occasionally, I have created threadpools for applications that are not I/O intensive. What I'm saying is, for most things that I create, performance is enough with Python.

However, I have been inspired by how much love Rust is getting from the people who use Rust. I have tried to find some books for using Rust for network automation and unfortunately I have not been able to find any reputable books.

Most of the "automation" work that I do involves parsing data with regex, restructuring the data, converting the data into a modeled format and transforming something with that data. Does anyone have any common use cases for Rust that might interest me? Has anyone used Rust for network automation tools? With familiarity, can Rust's intuitiveness match Python's "from idea to deployment" speed? Or should I only learn Rust if I intend to create applications that need tight performance?

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[–] wth@sh.itjust.works 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I’m usually a little suspicious of a new fancy language - because the language is only a part of the equation. Does it have good tooling and does it have awesome libraries?

I had a preconception that Rust is strong as a language (formally well structured, low shoot-yourself-in-the-foot potential, consistent, predictable) and that the tooling seemed strong (debuggers, editors, code completion, help, test frameworks), but I’ve always thought that it would lag with libraries. I mean compared to something like Python (« Batteries included ») or java, surely it is not yet compatible, right?.

So I chose a few of the less main-stream libraries that I use regularly… and Lo and behold! They exist for Rust, including Couchbase, SQLite, ECDH, DiffMatch. I can’t vouch for the completeness of those libs, but the fact that everything I looked for existed… that’s impressive.

[–] nous@programming.dev 5 points 1 year ago

One of rusts biggest issues ATM is a less mature eco system. Especially when compared to something as old as python. Rust does have a light stdlib compared to other languages as well and leans more heavily on its ecosystem to fill the gaps. But common things are already well established and mature and the whole ecosystem is coming along quite well.

Currently the biggest issues are the more fringe areas, like libraries for specific APIs or services or areas people have not quite covered yet. But these are fairly quickly lessening as people write libraries as they need them to fill the gaps. I would say its ecosystem is most there, at least enough for most projects now.

And IMO rust has some very nice ergonomics for some libraries - such as json de/serialization that just don't/cannot exist in other languages.

[–] Knusper@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think, one big reason why people are gladly implementing libraries in Rust is that they're useful even outside the ecosystem.

In languages which need a runtime environment (Python, Java, JS, Go etc.), you're locked into that ecosystem. Your code will only run inside of that runtime, meaning someone using another language can't run your code.

Rust does not need a runtime and it can generate libraries in the format of C. Any mature programming language can call into C libraries.
Plus, Rust's performance means it's actually quite worthwhile for higher-level languages to call these libraries.

[–] wth@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

To have library portability is a very cool feature. I hadn’t released that this was possible.