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by estebank 2615 days ago
I mentioned Python because it sits in the other extreme, but the combination of pattern matching, strong types, type inference and ergonomic combinators on the standard library makes the experience much nicer than, for example, Scala. Robust refactoring isn't new. Rust isn't novel. It's just well put together because it had the benefit of hindsight and being able to consider how different advanced features fit together without having to abide by backwards compatibility until recently. Refactoring a single threaded process that operates over a vector can be a single line code change, and the compiler is capable of complaining about data races by leveraging the type system and lifetime analysis.
1 comments

Much nicer than scala? I don't see how you can claim that if you've touched futures in both languages.

Rust is a nice language for threaded programming, but the async situation is a trainwreck 4 years in the making.

I have touched both and async in Rust is indeed half baked at the moment. That a factor of immaturity of Rust and maturity of Scala. I also had a Scala codebase that had 4 different Future classes, due to it having been an early adopter.

I was thinking if the language itself, where it needs to keep backwards compatibility with Java (the distinction between case classes and classes, for example) and over engineering (implicit action at a distance all over the place). I think Scala is a nice language buried in way too much syntactic sugar. Interestingly enough, Rust's syntax doesn't bother me but quite a few people seem out off by it.

Rust is new and it advances slowly but at a steady state. Given its immaturity in some areas I can only go off potential and the async story seems to have a bright future, despite it's somewhat underwhelming present.

The async situation for Rust is very much in flux, of course - see https://areweasyncyet.rs/ for details and updates. It's definitely a pain point at this time, and stability itself is an important value so I can see this making Rust less desirable for some - but calling it a "trainwreck" that the Rust community is supposedly to blame for just seems pointless, other than as snarky flamebait. That sort of comment is a good fit for `rustjerk`, not for the sort of substantive discussion we seek on HN.