> Rust is not a user feature, it's an implementation detail
Sure, but keep in mind that in the case of open source software plenty of people will choose software written in their favorite language so that they can potentially contribute to it. Or simply because they feel more connected to something that is written in their favorite language. So I don't think it's completely irrelevant.
It might not be a feature, but it is a selling point. It conveys that it was written relatively recently, is more likely to support modern features in the shell, runs reasonably fast and is reasonably portable.
If it was written in JS or python I'd already start worrying about what package manager to install it with in which environment, installing it globally is an anti pattern but symlinking it to .local/bin might complicate it.
So IMHO, the language something is written in is not just an implementation detail, it informs me in how well it will perform.
It's a prompt. Writing anything for that purpose is code gardening, but hey it's in rust so I'm supposed to be excited?
That, in essence is the problem "X in rust" normally means "I've written something of low value IN RUST. Gimmee upvotes". Come back when the project is interesting regardless of the language.
The fact that this happens should be food for thought for part of the rust community. Because the way I see it, if they keep this up, a few years from now, they could, other than some obscure linux kernel modules almost noone uses and a good grep-alternative, be well along what I lovingly call the "Haskell Route".
Almost every single project that makes it to the front page of HN tells you as part of the opening sentences what language it's in. For a good while it was "<thing>, (re)written in Go". There's nothing special or unique in the rust community about this, it's just what people in tech do.
The type of complaining you're doing is also nothing new, because exactly the same occurs under those posts when it's the language de jour. A few years ago when it was all about Go, you could look in the HN comments and see people complaining exactly the same way about Go and the Go community.
But it's an interesting observation, don't you think? Why is it that just by adding "... in Rust" you can almost guarantee that people will roll their eyes and think "oh, not another one".
Other languages do not carry such stigma, why does Rust have such reputation?
Completely guessing, but the thought comes to mind that Rust was (still is? I don't keep up these days) portrayed as The C Killer. So to specify "written in Rust" was to imply "I wrote something low-level without C/C++" or "I rewrote Popular C Tool in Rust" in the name of memory safety.
This is all wild speculation on my part, so please take it with a large grain of salt. I welcome alternative explanations or experiences.
> Completely guessing, but the thought comes to mind that Rust was (still is? I don't keep up these days) portrayed as The C Killer. So to specify "written in Rust" was to imply "I wrote something low-level without C/C++" or "I rewrote Popular C Tool in Rust" in the name of memory safety.
As the OP, this is a big part of it. Rust might be a great language, but people announcing they rewrote grep (for example) in rust doesn't mean they've done anything special. The rust language team did something special. The person making the announcement just took somebody else's idea and reimplemented it for very little reason.
Great! You learnt enough to reinvent the wheel. Now do something useful.
I still don't see your original point. Sounds like you have an axe to grind. I don't see anything negative in saying "written in Rust" or "written in OCaml" or "written in Haskell" or anything else.
Using a particular language signals a certain subset of qualities and broadcasting those helps people filter what they are interested in.
I like that go and rust binaries are statically linked. This means that I can build an environment I like using these and bring them almost everywhere, wsl, Mac, Ubuntu, red hat, etc. For me, this is the feature of rust/go.
It's not only though I don't understand why is this getting you "tired".
Rust has memory safety built in (unless one goes VERY out of their way to nullify it) which to many, myself included, is a selling point. F.ex. I wouldn't be interested in the userland tools rewrite if they weren't in Rust.
> Rust is not a user feature, it's an implementation detail.
It is that, yes, but not only that. Again, memory safety. And as another poster pointed out -- statically linked binaries. That helps a lot with certain deployments.
Also consider that HN might not be the place for you if mentioning implementation details are ticking you off. That's more or less how this forum started in the first place: people discussing implementation details.
> Rust is not a user feature, it's an implementation detail.
Rust is the new C. It communicates that something is fast, but also secure, and new or a modern reimplementation of something old. So, in that sense, is it a user feature because it has established itself in a way that tells the user some important details.
Am I the only one who is getting tired of comments complaining about people put “written in Rust” in the title? Lately every post having “written in Rust” has a comment like this.
If you don’t care, ignore it. Why should it bother you so much?
"X in Rust" to me mean that I won't have to fiddle with it when installing it and it'll work out of the box. This isn't unique to Rust, Go does this very well too. It'll also be reasonably fast, not just because of the language, but because the community likes performance. For example, a few years ago I tried the tldr command. It was in Node.js and unbearably slow. There was a Rust implementation, tealdeer, that was way faster.
Sure, but keep in mind that in the case of open source software plenty of people will choose software written in their favorite language so that they can potentially contribute to it. Or simply because they feel more connected to something that is written in their favorite language. So I don't think it's completely irrelevant.