[csomar]

This is exactly why I prefer Rust, eh, for everything. It forces you to think harder about your data structures and to better organize/understand your program and how data flows, gets consumed and get output.

You can ignore that in other languages, but this comes at a cost later.

[legerdemain]

My experience with Rust data structures is the opposite. To satisfy lifetime analysis inherent in pointer-based data structures, users tend to introduce additional indirection. For example, mapping keys to indexes, and then indexes to array elements, instead of simply mapping keys to values.

[verdagon]

I've used Rust quite a bit, but I would love to hear more about this. Is this comparing to lower level languages like C/C++/Zig, or higher level GC'd languages? What problems does it make us think more about up-front, and do you think it's due to single ownership (in the C++ and Rust sense) or the borrow checker?

[csomar]

If you think about programming as information transformation (ie: you are getting information in, applying a certain transformation and then giving some output), programming becomes about how this information flows. Data structure becomes the most important thing.

Here is an example that now frustrates me about JavaScript. I don't know if some variables "MyVal" declared somewhere is global, local or how transfer it around. Global variables no longer makes sense to me. In Rust, global variables are possible but they are obvious and their scope is completely within your control. Now, all the data is there and it's up to you how to structure it, move it around, store it, etc.. You have to think these through before doing any code. If you don't think well enough, the Rust compiler (borrow/ownership thing) will start to give you headaches.