[Jack_rando_fang]

Agreed. I still give Python credit for allowing us to write software in an extremely efficient way. But after I wrote the initial version of the software with Python, I always procrastinate on testing, fixing existing issues, and as the software grows larger I simply want to give up as the different issues keep piling up. In comparison, Rust code usually just works out of the box due to the error handling and type system designs. With rust I develop much more consistently, and even more efficiently as the project progresses due to IDE hints, rust's built in `cargo check`, `cargo clippy` commands etc.

[nprateem]

Don't you find thinking about the borrow checker unnecessary overhead while prototyping?

[jhgg]

No. Not anymore. 4 years in and I maybe run into a borrow checker issue very rarely in a given week.

Once you understand how the borrow checker works and how to write/structure your code in a way that the borrow checker is happy with it sort of becomes second nature.

I think by side effect coding in this style does lend itself to simply writing better to understand code. Nowadays I just write my code this way without much thought. It happens effortlessly. I find myself writing programs in other languages like I would in Rust nowadays.

This is compared to when I started and ran into borrow checking issues many times a day. Additionally the borrow checker has improved since then and NLL borrow checker will accept more programs as valid than the previous one.

[nprateem]

Interesting. I tried rust maybe 6 years ago and the combination of the BC and its slow compile times drove me away. Actually my main gripe was something to do with it not being obvious when calling a function that it needed a reference (I forget the specifics), but maybe that's been improved with better code completion in intellij. I may take another look.

[pdimitar]

Of course. That's rarely debatable (unless making sure that you have a very small memory footprint is one of the project's critically important goals).

The point is that you pay more upfront but can then iterate much more confidently and quickly.