Five years with Rust

http://words.steveklabnik.com/five-years-with-rust

by doppp • 9 years ago

220 69 9 years ago

words.steveklabnik.com

hckr1292• 9 years ago

Wait, are you leaving Mozilla or your day-to-day responsibilities with Rust? I'm confused about the message here.

Either way, your help in providing documentation and mentorship to me personally on IRC and thousands of other aspiring rust devs is something I'm profoundly grateful for. Thank you, Steve!!

staticassertion• 9 years ago

Nothing in the article seems to indicate him leaving Mozilla or rust. It ends with "here's to 5 more years".

Danihan• 9 years ago

No offense, but I'm not sure I understand the point of this post or why it's relevant / upvoted.

steveklabnik19• 9 years ago

My personal stuff tends to end up here, as I've been a part of Hacker News for quite a while now. My account is almost nine years old!

That said, I understand this sentiment, and it's why I didn't submit it myself. I think it's fine, as people do seem to be interested, but can also understand the opposite view.

weberc2• 9 years ago

I can't help but laugh at the commenter below who made a new account just to troll you. Part and parcel of being a prominent part of a community, I guess.

purple-again• 9 years ago

Being people ourselves many of us are as fascinated by the Recognized People associated with the things we’re interested in as we are with the thing itself.

It’s an interesting facet of the human experience that lets me live Steve’s life for a moment through my own lens of life experiences.

Buttons840• 9 years ago

I don't know Rust very well, but hope to learn it better soon. steveklabnik is the only person from the Rust team I recognize by name. He's always leaving detailed and positive replies in Rust related forums across the Internet. Thanks for all your hard work Steve.

StavrosK2• 9 years ago

I'm also always positively surprised by the people in the #rust-beginners IRC channel. No matter how dumb my question is, someone will always helpfully point me to the relevant documentation. They're so helpful that sometimes I worry that I'm inconveniencing them with my incessant questions.

steveklabnik19• 9 years ago

It’s no inconvenience! That’s why we’re there :)

saghm• 9 years ago

Although I can't speak for the rest of the software industry, Steve's hard work and talent have certainly made a huge impact on the Rust language and community. If you read this, thanks for everything you do to make Rust great!

doomrobo• 9 years ago

The Rust project would be very different without Steve's efforts. One of the greatest things about the project is the coherence, clarity, rigor, and ease-of-use of the documentation system. The Rust Book has also been a massive aid in attracting new users. I only hope that Steve continues to lend his talent to the project in the future.

aaron-lebo• 9 years ago

Every great language needs a Steve.

If you don't read anything else programming related next year, read the Rust book. Even if you don't need Rust, there's a lot you can learn from it.

https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/second-edition/

ksec• 9 years ago

While it is great that Rust has Steve, sadly this is at the cost of Ruby Rails. I wonder if he will ever comes back to the Ruby communities.

madez8• 9 years ago

Five years in, I think my journey has been successful so far. I’m proud of how far Rust has come. That said, there’s a lot more work to do. I’m still committed as ever to getting that work done, (...)

It's good to hear that people behind Rust intent to continue working on Rust. One thing I'm missing, however, is what exactly is considered important to be solved. There are many things how Rust could be made more viable or attractive for a variety of scenarios.

For example, I don't consider it important to be able to compile Rust to JavaScript, because I don't think JavaScript is a good thing.

On the other hand, downstream packaging of Rust and libraries is important. There are scenarios where rustup and cargo are not acceptable. Is this on the radar?

Another issue is target/host support and independent implementations. Rusts only Tier 1 platforms are of the backdoored x86-family. Is this not considered an issue to be solved to make the world a better place?

I don't intent to blame, shame or finger-point anybody, but just point out critical remarks that come to mind.

vvanders• 9 years ago

Most of that is covered pretty well in "Rust in 2017"[1] which somehow didn't make it to the front page.

Splitting out cargo and build systems is something that is explicitly called out and I'm pretty sure there's a bunch of work ongoing to get other Tier 1 targets online.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15980359

steveklabnik19• 9 years ago

No blame/shame taken!

Everyone has their own opinions as to the work to be done. We now have a yearly roadmap process for each year, and are soon going to be opening that up to community discussion. Feedback from everyone that cares about Rust is extremely important!

That's also part of why I didn't elaborate; my thoughts on that are a whole big post unto itself. That said, my personal focus is on documentation, ease of use, and growth, so those are some broad areas in which I'd like to push hard on next year. The funny thing about goals is that they often tie into other goals, for example, I believe that documentation is a huge part of ease of use. Same with how other people's goals might fit into my goals; language design is also a big part of ease of use, for example.

What I will say is that I'm currently prototyping a complete re-think of how Rust does documentation; I'm excited to share it but it's not ready yet.

To briefly comment on some of the points you've raised:

I don't consider it important to be able to compile Rust to JavaScript

We share this opinion, but compiling to WebAssembly is a whole different ballgame.

There are scenarios where rustup and cargo are not acceptable. Is this on the radar?

It's hard to say without knowing more details of what exactly you mean; distros are already packaging Rust and libraries, for example. In general though, this is a thing we've put a ton of effort to in the past, and I expect to have even more in the future.

Rusts only Tier 1 platforms are of the the backdoored x86-family

A few things; we've been thinking about reconsidering the tier system because it isn't a good representation of support. ARM is basically tier 1 but there's a tiny detail about it that prevents us from fitting it into today's "tier 1" rules.

What we need to improve platform support is experts in those platforms to help us. With our current people, we're doing what we can, but we'd love for people to get involved and drive better support for more platforms.

This stuff absolutely matters; consider Firefox, for example: they have Tier 1 platforms that aren't Tier 1 for us (ARM), but they do depend on us. That's a problem!

independent implementations

There's one significant independent implementation, but in some sense, this is something we can't actually do ourselves, otherwise it wouldn't be independent. :) I personally don't think this is a massive problem for Rust today; eventually it would be nice though. It does factor into how we do some things, as we try to pretend as though we have alternative implementations, even though we really don't today, in preparation for that future.

madez8• 9 years ago

Thanks for your elaborate comment. It is interesting to read and insightful. I just have comments for select sections:

> I don't consider it important to be able to compile Rust to JavaScript
We share this opinion, but compiling to WebAssembly is a whole different ballgame.

If I understand correctly, WebAssembly is essentially the same as JavaScript, and therefore something I'd like to avoid. I do not want random executable code from websites, that my browser then automatically executes. I don't think sandboxing is a solution, because it's an inherently impossible problem. Externally controlled and unaccaunted executable code is _always_ bad. Instead, let's fix some restricted non-turing complete markup language, like HTML, and stay with that. It's an optimal solution.

Maybe, probably, I'm missing something here, but JavaScript and WebAssembly seem to be things that are not in the interest of users.

> There are scenarios where rustup and cargo are not acceptable. Is this on the radar?
It's hard to say without knowing more details of what exactly you mean; distros are already packaging Rust and libraries, for example. In general though, this is a thing we've put a ton of effort to in the past, and I expect to have even more in the future.

Cargo and Rustup seem to be in competition to the existing package management systems. Why not integrate rust and the libraries into the existing packagement systems, like so many other software projects do? How is Cargo and rustup better than Apt?

Also, Apt is perfectly usable without internet. One can download the entire Debian archive to a hard drive and use it without any external connections. How would I do that with Cargo and Rustup? This is just one point. There are so many scenarios Apt already has solutions for, that Cargo and Rustup probably didn't even consider yet.

Anyhow, clearly this issue is noted and even already worked on. That's more I could ask for.

Another thing I forgot to mention is IDE support. I read that Rust is now supposedly supported in Gnome Builder, but I see no option to create a Rust project. This is not the responsibility of the Rust team, and it's just an anecdote, but it affects Rust and it's usage and growth.

unknown_apostle4• 9 years ago

What do you mean with backdoored for the x86 family?

steveklabnik19• 9 years ago

I believe they're talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine and http://www.amd.com/en-us/innovations/software-technologies/s...

abiox• 9 years ago

For example, I don't consider it important to be able to compile Rust to JavaScript, because I don't think JavaScript is a good thing.

what do you mean, exactly?

people are interested in compilation to javascript principally because js is the language of the browser; if it was just another scripting language (like perl, ruby, lua, etc) there wouldn't have been such a transpiler explosion.

madez8• 9 years ago

JavaScript and WebAssembly are used like DRM on steroids. I explained myself here a bit more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15982323

Edit: Those who downvoted, do you disagree, or was there another reason?

SideburnsOfDoom2• 9 years ago

For example, I don't consider it important to be able to compile Rust to JavaScript, because I don't think JavaScript is a good thing.

Seems to be confusion here between "I'm not interested in using that technology" and "Nobody should use that technology".

If you're saying the first, fine. I often feel that way too, it's not that important a statement since you can just not use it and move on.

Someone has to do Javascript though: targeting the web browser client is important and here to stay although it is evolving, and wasm is part of that evolution.

If you're saying the second then that's not in line with existing reality. The ship has sailed on whether we're going to have apps running in the browser or not.

StavrosK2• 9 years ago

Someone has to do Javascript though: targeting the web browser client is important and here to stay although it is evolving, and wasm is part of that evolution.

WebAssembly has nothing to do with Javascript, though. I don't think that's what the GP means.

nickpsecurity• 9 years ago

VIA wasn't backdoored that I know about. That, a TRNG, a crypto engine, and virtualization support was why I designed around Artigo's a long time ago for little security boxes. Looking at it now, I see a quad-core with no mention of a management engine:

https://www.viatech.com/en/silicon/processors/quadcore-e-ser...

There was also another article indicating they have a 28nm chip in works with better performance. They're designed by Centaur Technology in Austin, TX. Might not be immune to national security activities in that jurisdiction. They'll also be way slower than desktop-class chips of Intel and AMD. Yet, there are options for x86 past Intel and AMD. Like everything else, the odds of a backdoor from groups like NSA also gets lower the older the design you buy since most were focusing on software and crypto back then.

EDIT to add link below. Anyone interested in hardware design, esp FOSS, might find their server farm impressive or daunting depending on how cheap you wanted CPU design to be. ;)

http://www.centtech.com/?page_id=2723

steveklabnik19• 9 years ago

Hey all,

I don't wanna spam comments with just "<3", so please consider this a collective reply.

I can see how some may have read some of this as me leaving, but I can assure you, I'm not. I'm more committed than ever.

chewbacha• 9 years ago

Your contributions have helped me gain and appreciate much of the rust eco system. You have helped build a strong community with an even stronger open-source mentality.

Thank you!

unknown_apostle4• 9 years ago

I'm studying Rust as we speak, took 3 weeks off for it. The documentation is absolutely top notch, thank you Steve & team!

It won't be easy to find a project in Rust or to get a customer to start a project in it, but I sure would like to.

zerr• 9 years ago

There are no Rust jobs apparently?: https://rustjobs.rs/

steveklabnik19• 9 years ago

That requires someone to actually post a job; I'm not sure how well people know of that site. I forgot it existed until you mentioned it.

Most of what we're seeing in the "Rust jobs" space is companies hiring people to do Rust work, but also other work, and so they're not pure "Rust jobs". For example, take Dropbox, one of our oldest production users. They have a job opening for a Senior Software Engineer right now: https://www.dropbox.com/jobs/listing/735139

Nowhere in this listing do they mention any specific technology. Will you get to use Rust in this job? Maybe! Maybe not. They tend to hire good programmers, and expect them to be flexible, in my understanding.

Another genre is stuff like Amazon, who used to have a job posting up here, that now 404s: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/jobs/559813/sr-software-developme...

This posting said that knowing Rust was a plus for the job. Does that mean you get to write Rust? I can't say, as I don't know the details of what that job entails, but it might be a good way to differentiate yourself from the crowd.

Anyway, I think jobs using Rust are extremely important, and want to see more of them. It takes time though :)

unknown_apostle4• 9 years ago

Too bad, there's bobkes even on that site :-)

But thanks, I'll keep an eye on it.

foota• 9 years ago

I didn't really understand ownership until I started working in c++, now I think I understand it a lot better.

nixpulvis• 9 years ago

Can't wait to see Rust for embedded development become more mature over then next few years!

Five years with Rust

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