[ekidd]

> Not sure how a hybrid approach will work.

The hybrid approach works great. We use typed scripting languages for business logic and Rust CLI tools for "inner loops", and this balance gives us the best of both worlds.

There is an important caveat here: If you are already comfortable in Rust, then it's a fantastic tool for all sorts of things. But if you're just learning Rust, then there's a one-time cost for getting comfortable. So for a small team with zero prior Rust experience, expect to spend 2-6 weeks getting comfortable. (The learning curve is shorter if you already know about pointers and closures, and longer if it's your first low-level language.)

Your plan sounds entirely reasonable.

[klodolph]

The 2-6 weeks figure seems optimistic to me. I think it’s easy to underestimate how long it takes to switch languages and operate at a high level of productivity in the new language. Yes, switching languages is much easier than learning to program. Yes, I would rather hire a proficient programmer who doesn’t know the language than a mediocre programmer who does. But no, I don’t think that 6 weeks is enough for most people to get their Rust skills to a professional level.

[HWR_14]

> The learning curve is shorter if you already know about pointers and closures

Every time I read something like this, I'm reminded that pointers and closures aren't universally understood concepts in professional programmers. And I'm sad.

[chungus]

I share this sentiment, it's kind of a bummer. I ran into this non-stop in enterprise Java/C# development environments, more specifically in developers who are not "classically schooled" (i.e. bootcampers). Fact of the matter was, they never needed to know about pointers to do their job. They only even knew the term from the "null pointer exception". I looked into the curriculum of various levels of IT studies and unless you get taught at university level there are little to no memory / hardware oriented classes. It has started to get a bit better since the introduction of Java 8 (don't look up how long ago this was, ouch) and people got familiar with "lambda's".

[orangetuba]

2-6 weeks? I wish I could learn Rust in that time.