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by saghm 3489 days ago
Because I'm one of the only people passionate about Rust at my job (and there are plenty who love Go), I'm often asked questions about Rust vs. Go, which actually perplexes me a little. Asking "What about Go?" when someone brings up Rust is essentially like saying "What about OCaml?"; the languages have a few similar features (as most languages do, IMO), but they have completely different goals and only a subset of shared use-cases (and again, you'll likely find at least some shared use-cases if you pick any two languages). I feel like constantly bringing up Rust and Go together confuses things more than it helps, since they really aren't that similar.
2 comments
im_down_w_otp 3489 days ago
I experience the same thing all the time. Go has become the new node.js for ineffectual, out-of-touch technical managers and mediocre engineers to just randomly throw out as their "What about _____?" hobby horse.

I got myself out of the position of contrasting it against whatever they were railing against (in this case Erlang), and instead just put the question back on them. "I don't know, you tell me why I should consider Go for this."

Usually shuts down the conversation because they don't actually know anything about Go. Just that they've heard other people talk about it.

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iamed2 3489 days ago
I think people compare them because they were both designed as alternatives to C++ (or at least with that in mind). What people might miss is that they were solving two very different problems: Rust aims to be as fast (or faster) while guaranteeing memory safety, while Go aims to be easy to understand and get productive as quickly as possible.
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saghm 3488 days ago
> I think people compare them because they were both designed as alternatives to C++ (or at least with that in mind).

I find it really interesting when people say this, because to me, Go only seems like a suitable replacement for higher-level C++, whereas Rust could conceivably be used in any domain where C++ would be suitable. I'm not sure if this is the general consensus or just my perception though, so this could be clouded by my bias of being a heavy Rust user.

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