[rcarr]

As someone who doesn't know either language, would love HN's opinion on this video that was recommended to me by another HN user on a Rust thread a few days ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-tb1ZfkwgQ

The general gist of the video is the creator prefer Rust for functional programming and programs without much state and Go for everything else. As someone who's coming from a React background I don't see why if Rust is brilliant for functional programming why it can't also be good for programs with state if the right design decisions are taken to handle it - can you not just use a redux style store with actions and reducers?

[goku12]

I have experience in Rust, but not in Go. The video was more informative than I expected - a lot of comparative insights into the type systems. Ocaml sounds interesting. And while personally prefer Rust for everything, I agree that Go might be the better choice if the developers have to learn it from scratch or have to develop the application quickly. Rust takes a lot of effort to reach the level where you can appreciate its advantages. Once in a while, you can see someone cursing Rust because they were forced by the management to use Rust to develop an application under a tight deadline.

Rust, on the other hand, guarantees memory safety, pushes you to design better programs and cuts down on debugging time a lot. Rust is the better choice when correctness and performance matters. And if you are comfortable with Rust, it's good for almost any task.

> The general gist of the video is the creator prefer Rust for functional programming and programs without much state and Go for everything else.

Rust has no problems with handling states, as you guessed. They can't be global states (like in Go?). You have to group the state variables logically and pass them around. An additional constraint is that the data structures should be in a tree form. The ownership rules make it hard to have circular and mutual references in data structures (it's still possible with things like Rc and unsafe blocks).

Whether all this is an advantage or disadvantage really depends upon your preference. For example, I usually have a single large config object in my Python programs, whereas Rust forces me to split it up into manageable pieces. Frankly, I prefer the Rust style for multiple reasons: 1. Global states and circular references are an easy recipe for disastrous bugs. 2. Splitting up large state variables into smaller ones make it easier to reason about the purpose of each code section - it encourages more modular, refactorable and reusable code. (Splitting up data feels magical. All the problems seem to suddenly disappear when you reach a certain level of segregation) I haven't yet worked on a program that can't be written in Rust.

[rcarr]

Very informative reply, thank you