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by woodruffw 89 days ago
AFAICT, lacking a (good) standard HTTP library is kind of the norm in popular languages. Python, Ruby, Rust, etc. all either have a lackluster standard one or are missing one. I think it sits between two many decision pressures for most languages: there are a _lot_ of different RFCs both required and implied, lots of different idioms you could pick for making requests, lots of different places to draw the line on what to support, etc.

The notable exception is Go, which has a fantastic one. But Go is pretty notable for having an incredible standard library in general.
2 comments
Kwpolska 89 days ago
I thought Rust’s got a very small standard library, only focusing on things that must be in a standard library, mainly primitives or things which require co-operation with the underlying OS (e.g. thread and process management)? That’s completely opposite of Python’s “batteries included” approach.
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woodruffw 89 days ago
Sure, I'm not making a categorical argument about big vs. small stdlibs. I'm just noting that "a good default HTTP library" is in fact kind of unusual, whether or not the language is batteries-included or not.

(As an outsider I had the impression that Go's net/http was good, but a lot of people in this thread are complaining about it as well. So it may be 0-4 instead of 1-3).

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Pay08 89 days ago
Is Rust popular? It's popular among HN users, and among certain other bubbles, but can it be called generally popular? Ruby sure can't be.
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woodruffw 89 days ago
It's popular enough to be worth using as a datapoint. What's the point of the question?
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Pay08 89 days ago
I don't think it is worth using as a datapoint. Webdev is simply not what Rust was made for. It'd be somewhat like PHP having inline assembly.
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woodruffw 89 days ago
I don't think this is relevant on three grounds:

1. Whether or not it was "made for" webdev, people do use Rust for that.

2. Plenty of people write networked Rust that interacts with HTTP. That code requires an HTTP stack, even if it isn't web development.

3. Like all of the other examples, Rust does have an excellent third-party HTTP stack (reqwest and its underpinnings). So it's not like Rust fails to do HTTP.

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