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by hot_gril 1192 days ago
I think highly of the new generation and would consider a good new grad about as good as me (a senior-level SWE age 26). My experience with fully learning and using Rust is that it's a constant burden for high-level work no matter how well you know it. Similarly with C++, except that is even worse.

Rust has its place for things that need to be especially optimized. It's far too pedantic for the kind of things you can do in NodeJS or Flask. New grad would be annoyed, and so would I.
1 comments
AA-BA-94-2A-56 1192 days ago
I don't know a whole lot about Rust, but if the pedantism is related to syntax, wouldn't current AI-assisted programming tools be able to help with that?

I've had GPT-4 explain to me weird niches in Django that I don't understand, because I'm coming from a Javascript background. It'll pick up what I'm trying to do, give me the code I'm trying to write, and tell me where I went wrong.

In the process I learn a lot, and waste a lot less time trawling Stack Overflow and parsing other people's code and closed threads.

It's a lot like having a more experienced developer over my shoulder.

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hot_gril 1192 days ago
To answer your question, yes. This is also what I try to hint people at work who refuse to move past the "real programmer" languages, most of their talent is very soon replaceable by GPT.

Idk if you'd call it syntax or what, but what makes Rust pedantic is that you're always worrying about lifetimes, types, explicit errors (as opposed to exceptions), and other things you mostly don't think about in JS or Py. It's like C++ only nicer and safer. It's not that JS/Py is a lower skill, it's that devs don't want to waste time. Of course Rust or C++ makes plenty of sense for lower-level stuff or anything that needs to be especially optimized.

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DeathArrow 1191 days ago
> It's like C++ only nicer and safer

Rust is enforcing safety while C++ does not. C++ can be safe if you need it to be. Just use safe constructs.

I'd argue that some people might not find Rust nicer.

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hot_gril 1191 days ago
C++ won't be as safe as Rust unless you use it like Java, copying everywhere or overusing shared_ptr so you don't worry about lifetimes, which nobody really does.
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