Ask HN: How do you use Rust at work?

[s_c_r]

I like to find ways to use a variety of languages at work when it makes sense. For example, Python/Pandas is great for dealing with spreadsheets and other large data sets, Go gives a speed boost over interpreted languages for REST endpoints. JavaScript for front end stuff of course.

Try as I might, I can't think of any specific use case that makes Rust more compelling than another language for general programming tasks. I don't work with anything embedded or otherwise low level where the lack of a GC would be necessary. Are there any tasks you have found Rust to be a good fit for in your day job, where you otherwise might have reached another language?

[steveklabnik]

Oxide is using Rust for everything, from "firmware" up through "the backend of our APIs." I linked to a talk some of my co-workers gave about the API and control plane stuff here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26253928 . We are still early enough that a lot of this is not public, but eventually everything will be open source.

Yes, the technologies you've mentioned are good at those things. But what matters is more "is this technology viable for this task." This is because requirements are different from team to team. For example: imagine I work at a place where all of our software is written in Java. Let's say that Rails is 100% good for building a website, and Java is 90% good. For me and my team, choosing Java may make sense, even if it, in some sense, is not the globally best option. It's actually not the best option for me, because I have like, a bonus for Java because I already have a ton of people that know it, and consistency matters. But if you don't know Java, but do know Rails, then choosing Rails is the right choice for you. We can disagree on the "best" choice, and both be right.

(Now, if there was a tool that was 90% good for a task, and Java was 10% good, that might outweigh the consistency and various other requirements. And there's always something that a given tool is 0% good for.)

Reducing Rust to "only good when I can't use GC" is not appreciating the full things that Rust offers, which is of course, what you're asking about. Many people love the tooling, the type system, the performance, the consistency, the low resource usage, the concurrency tools. The lack of GC is incidental, in a sense. For some thoughts on this, from someone who is on the language team: https://without.boats/blog/notes-on-a-smaller-rust/ My main point here is that, Rust doesn't have to be the globally best choice for it to make sense to choose Rust, it just has to be a viable enough choice, and that can depend on a variety of individual factors.

[s_c_r]

Appreciate the insight. All fair points. I guess part of the problem is inertia and comfort level. You figure out how to do something well in one language and it gets harder to start from scratch in another one. Point is well made about the tooling and type system--I miss it when I work with anything else. But I end up accomplishing tasks much faster in Go than in Rust even if I'm not fighting the ownership system. I suppose these are the sorts of growing pains that go away in time.

[steveklabnik]

Totally! And, honestly, maybe it never goes away, and Rust just isn't the right choice for you and your team. That's okay too :)

[wezm]

We used Rust to replace font handling that was implemented in C in Prince¹ (which is mostly written in Mercury). This was then extended to include all font shaping and released as Allsorts². We integrate the Mercury code with Rust via FFI/Rust’s C interop.

¹ https://www.princexml.com/

² https://github.com/yeslogic/allsorts