From Pythonista to Rustacean

by behnamoh • 4 years ago

245 57 4 years ago

sintezcs• 4 years ago

I thought the post is about an excellent iOS App - Pythonista, a Python IDE and at the same time a collection of Python wrappers over iOS APIs that gives you the possibility to create custom actions and automations right on your iPhone

dec0dedab0de2• 4 years ago

Pythonista is what python developers call themselves. At least the ones active in the community. Rustacean is the equivalent for Rust.

jimbob45• 4 years ago

I would assume Pythonista is the feminine version and Pythonist is the masculine version. Although, in practice, I would just say "Python user".

mb7733• 4 years ago

I've always wondered... Do people really say these words out loud? I've never heard anyone describe themselves as a "Pythonista","Gopher", "Rustacian" etc IRL. But I also don't work a ton with those languages.

nomel2• 4 years ago

Pythonista is what python developers call themselves.

Just curious, where have you seen this exactly?

I think I heard it once in real life, over the last decade, used by a non-technical manager. I’ve only read it a few times, online, also mostly by non-python users. I’ve never called myself a pythonista, and I’ve never known anyone who has. But, I also have never been in a group with individuals that know, or identifies as, a single language.

evilduck• 4 years ago

The iOS app came after the Python community had adopted the term.

valarauko• 4 years ago

I've used it in the past, but it hasn't seen updates for over 2 years now. Does the app still work with iOS 16?

ultrasounder• 4 years ago

Serendipity is when you look for how to learn Rust from a Python developers perspective and the first post is on how to migrate from Python to Rust

epage2• 4 years ago

While some things are a little stale, this is great! I wish this existed for more languages.

metadat• 4 years ago

Can you specify which parts have gone stale?

I wonder if rochacbruno will accept a PR.

epage2• 4 years ago

It says the Org for it is Mozilla Research when its now the Rust Foundation.

It mentions cobalt for an SSG. While I'm flattered (as the maintainer) atm zola would be a better recommendation until I can find more time to devote to cobalt.

Those were from just a quick scan. Unsure what else there might be.

nicolashahn• 4 years ago

Absolutely ancient in Rust's timeline (2019) but I wrote a thing on coming from Python and learning Rust (and Go): https://www.nicolas-hahn.com/python/go/rust/programming/2019...

I actually don't write any of these languages anymore day to day, but not by choice (doing a lot of Kotlin and Typescript, both are fairly decent languages IMO)

FerociousTimes• 4 years ago

OT: Was Rustafarian taken or was it just you are not you when you're hungry?

Jemaclus• 4 years ago

I know you're being funny, but Rustacean is the (un)official name for Rust programmers and has been for years: https://rustaceans.org/

joaquincabezas• 4 years ago

I am really curious about Rust after looking for API proxies (in particular Linkerd2 - https://github.com/linkerd/linkerd2-proxy). Can anyone share her/his experience on going from Python to Rust? (bonus point if related to API :lol:)

masklinn3• 4 years ago

Drawbacks: the learning curve is steep, the compiler is not forgiving, the pre-debugging throughput is low, you start missing many APIs when you have to go back to Python, missing some useful niceties (keyword & default parameters, comprehensions, generators, ...), harder to do quick experiment or lookey (no REPL, no -i).

Advantages: many APIs are stellar, way less runtime debugging (you actually get benefits from the unforgiving compiler), a sense of control, great performances

For APIs: Serde is an absolute banger.

Less clear: significant reliance on crates (third-party library). They're much easier to use than in Python (`cargo doc` in particular helps a lot as it provides a one-stop shop offline API documentation of all your dependencies as well as your own project) and there's more flexibility, but a 0-dep project is not going to be easy if that's your ideal. Then again if you're doing API stuff it probably is not as python's stdlib is quite crummy when it comes to web applications.

mijamo• 4 years ago

Cargo docs is a bit of a curse for me. A lot of crates have docs only through that mean and think just having a few lines of intro is enough and then we'll good luck understanding the library.

I love the docs in the Python ecosystem as a lot of them contain guides, examples on how to use the library is real world context. Rust library documentation often feels like if someone gave you a schema of all the components in your car, but not a driver's manual.

insane_dreamer• 4 years ago

How's testing in Rust compared to Python?

vonseel2• 4 years ago

dict literals :(

Although I read there are crates to help with this, and it's indicative of bad programming styles...

Dowwie• 4 years ago

I do not recommend this README be used as a reference for onboarding. People need to stop upvoting this post.

d0mine• 4 years ago

Your comment could benefit from some specifics and/or a link to the better (in your opinion) guide.

hotfixguru• 4 years ago

Who said it’s for onboarding? It contains good resources, a quick overview of some crates and tools and shows some quick comparison examples - all good things for people who haven’t really touched rust. It won’t shape a developer for life, or even a week for that matter.

jstx1• 4 years ago

Generally I don't care for these lists because the best way to learn something doesn't change depending on your background as much as people think it does. But I do like the list of roughly equivalent tools/frameworks.

nomel2• 4 years ago

because the best way to learn something doesn't change

What do you consider the best way?

letwhile• 4 years ago

not op, but i often see people trying to push their old mindset on a language they are learning, which is a bad approach. maybe i miss sth, but i don't see how any knowledge from python is applicable to rust. so it may be beneficial to clear your mind and go from zero.

sbf501• 4 years ago

Also not OP, but I find the best way to learn a new language is to attempt a project using just the documentation. In my mind, the documentation for the language should provide methods, paradigms, and patterns required to think in that language (and get the benefits). E.g., Starting as complete noob and following the rules as written by the language itself.

This is a different approach from: how do I turn some code I wrote in language X to language Y? Similar to transliterating a spoken language versus learning it from the ground-up. Going from Spanish to Italian, you can kindof get away with word-for-word replacement in the same order and get the gist. You can't really do that with, say, Japanese, where there are far more rules not just of grammar but of register and assembly which are nonexistent in romantic languages. In other words, you might learn some vocabulary, but you'll face a big challenge to learning the language with this approach.

Both approaches are completely valid, but you'll get further (farther?) with one than the other. You may also realize you are using the wrong language for the project in the process. For example, when I first started heavily using PERL in the mid-90's, and then switched back to C, I was really frustrated I couldn't operate with strings and regexes so recklessly like I did in PERL, but that's because I was using the wrong language (C) for something that should have stayed in PERL.

qwertox2• 4 years ago

Not OP, and probably also not the best way, but it works for me:

I started by picking the topic which interests me the most, where I have a lot of experience in. I searched for the most popular framework in order to not risk using something shady.

Then I implemented the rudimentary things (in my case a warp based websocket server), used the book to help me understand the things that weren't clear, started adding the features I use the most, like JSON parsing and object construction, datetime handling, adding a task with an interval timer to notify all clients periodically.

Then I went to the client side with a new project based on tungstenite.

Now I have a basic idea of what the language feels like and enough questions to read the book with motivation, knowing what it is I want to know and why the book tries to tell me about other topics which I should know about.

I'm also watching a lot of YouTube videos, specially from the really good channel "Let's get Rusty", which goes through every chapter of the book and adds some additional related information. Then also conference session with topics that could be helpful.

drexlspivey• 4 years ago

I found that co-pilot really helps with Rust, it saves me many minutes trying to get small 3-4 line functions right.

ilovefood• 4 years ago

This has been a great help to get started but was missing the "guide me through it" part for me. I wrote an article with some code samples for writing Rust code coming from a Python background (data engineering). It's great to see many "Pythonistas" getting interested / curious about Rust. I'm certain there is a lot of good things in both languages even though the onboarding experience is a bit more hands on with Python.

Might be helpful for someone, my small contribution to how to get started with Rust by "keeping it close to Python" https://karimjedda.com/carefully-exploring-rust/

nu11ptr2• 4 years ago

I think things like this are great, but you have to keep in mind WHAT they are good for. This is NOT going to teach you Rust. What it is going to do is very quickly get you familiar with the ecosystem and relate it to something you know already. This can be helpful as you are learning to help you feel less inundated by all the new concepts and crates. It also will give you a quick and dirty on how a basic concept maps between what you know (Python) and what you don't yet (Rust). In no way does this take the place of a good tutorial or book on Rust for learning the language, but instead I would equate this more with a reference book which you use for targeted inquiries, not ground up learning.

jak6jak• 4 years ago

What would you recommend for ground up learning?

whoooooo123• 4 years ago

It's hard to go wrong with the book The Rust Programming Language.

https://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/book/

gary17the• 4 years ago

Read the official, free Rust Book[1].

Rust is easy to learn by reading (in order to understand programming concepts unique to the language, such as the borrow checker and lifetimes), but Rust is hard to learn by experimentation alone (trying 100 different syntax variations to see what compiles).

If you want to understand what Rust is mostly about, perhaps watch the "Firehose of Rust, for busy people who know some C++" video[2].

[1] https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSyfZVuD32Y

nu11ptr2• 4 years ago

I like "the book", but I felt more prepared for the real world after reading the O'reilly book, 2nd edition. That was sufficient for me to write any code I needed. If you want a deeper understanding, "Rust for Rustaceans" is a great book (disclaimer: I only read about half of it - too busy coding :-)

First: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/programming-rust-2nd/97...

If you want to go deeper after that: https://nostarch.com/rust-rustaceans

andrepd• 4 years ago

I don't dislike the faster than lime intro blogpost.

asicsp• 4 years ago

Check out https://loige.co/where-to-go-to-learn-rust-in-2021/

n8henrie• 4 years ago

I'm also familiar with the term but was hoping the post was about the app -- or rather about a rust equivalent to the app!

the__alchemist• 4 years ago

Anecdote: I find my Rust code doesn't resemble the syntax examples in the article. Why am I using Rust? Because it's fast, is good at interacting with hardware, and is suitable for certain domains where there aren't many alternatives (and it happens to have key advantages over the alternatives). Ie: Embedded, and computer graphics.

In the former, there's (by default, and often good reason to maintain this) no allocator, so the allocator-based-collections used as the backbone of the article don't apply. In the latter, there's still a lot of manipulating byte arrays etc, as that's the interface between CPU and GPU.

Related to both domains: The article is about data structure manipulation, but in general, when I choose Rust, it's to interact with hardware. That's the magic; that's where the language transcends syntax differences. Ie various MCU peripherals, communication lines and buses, passing data to a GPU etc. I think that would be an interesting comparison to highlight.

I'm not disparaging the text, but pointing out that its general title hides its narrow scope.

adsharma• 4 years ago

A pythonista can also learn rust by using a transpiler:

https://github.com/py2many/py2many/

From Pythonista to Rustacean

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