The old site said to me "Here's a programming language made by programmers for programmers.".
The new site says to me "Here's a programming language which has a marketing team.".
The "Featuring" bullet list was an excellent way of calling out what makes Rust distinctive, and I felt I could trust what it said to be basically true.
But claims like "empowers everyone to become a systems programmer" or "Rust has great documentation", coming from the language's own designers, convey little information: they might be an over-optimistic view.
(Or, in the language of the blog post: I trust them to tell me what a fireflower is. I'd rather judge for myself whether I believe that it will turn me into Fire Mario.)
I strongly agree. The list of features on the old list is very meaningful to a C programmer who will recognize all of those things as things would love to use every day. Its underlying message is "we're technical nerds and we made a thing that you'll like".
The new version is corporate-speak that won't appeal to.. anyone? Its underlying message is "we're trying to get you to like us and we studied how to do this".
But, like, what's the point of a programming language's website anyway? Most people who visit the site will probably be at least vaguely aware of it. You use it if recommendations online, code samples, etc are compelling, and if the early adoption story (examples and motivations) are compelling. All I ever want is a list of examples up front and center. The more words I have to get through that aren't literal actual examples that show both what the language looks like and what differentiates it... the more exhausting the whole experience.
In my (useless) opinion, the old website looks more modern and approachable. I can see immediately what are the benefits of Rust, as well as a code sample. The new site only offers a vague tagline ("The programming language that empowers everyone to become a systems programmer."), which doesn't explain much.
In my (useful(?)) opinion, the code sample didn't really illustrate the nice things about rust. I do like the bulleted list from the old website, but I find the new website more modern and approachable (especially with all the big headings and smaller text that drills down into the details). Maybe they wanted to give users a more focused view on the biggest selling points, rather than show some generic-looking code and several bullet points that noobs might not understand?
But, in my (useless) opinion, the green is... "bold", and that part isn't very modern or approachable
They have a clean, effective website. It has a pleasing look, and mostly it's just what a webpage should be, after all: a document. Text, images, an interactive code editor. Some CSS to make it look pleasing and readable. A navbar at the top. It works, it is pleasing to the eye, it communicates what it what it is meant to communicate and links to 4 important sections of the website.
Wait, let's throw all that away and develop a vomit-inducing monstrosity, complete with: in-your-face extra-bold title headers, jarring colours and colour changes, overall very large design suitable for tablets and not desktops (which is after all where most of your target audience should be accessing from)... What a complete cock-up. The web design equivalent of painting flames on your car: an immature attempt to look "cool" that turns the thing into an horrendous mess.
This is a result of Rust attempting to be "social ecosystem" instead of a "useful programming language". Sigh.
If you really wanted to improve the current website, make the "Featuring" bullets actually change the code in the runbox. Now THAT would be impressive so that people can actually see what all the fuss actually looks like.
As for the new site, I'll leave the cosmetics to people far more qualified to judge.
However, as someone who works in embedded and has been tracking Rust, the idea of putting "Embedded" on the front page and trying to advertise Rust as a useful embedded language isn't just laughable--it's dangerous. Rust is so far from useful in embedded that people who try to use it will NEVER come back and they will report to their managers that it shouldn't even be looked at for another 5-10 years.
Until I can sit down with a sparkly new Windows 10 VM, plug my board in via USB, fire of a Windows installer, double-click on a selection dialog for my current evaluation board, watch it crunch and then pop up a Debug windows with an LED blinking, we're not even at the starting line. (Most environments for embedded now are pretty good about this--getting your blinking LED really is the "Hello, World!" equivalent).
That's what the whole post is about: why. There's plenty of room for critical opinions, but at least address the started rationale.
They had a problem that wasn't yours: they're trying to reach an audience they don't have yet and they think this might. They what to address the why you might want Rust, not the what it is, or how it does it exactly.
I actually really like it. I liked the old site too, but I don’t really think this design is a mistake. It kind of makes me feel like rust is more approachable. /shrug
I actually like the new website. I think the primary barrier to Rust adoption now is something along the lines of "my organization doesn't use it"—this website is clearly geared toward persuading CTOs or administrators.
It's a sign of the strength of the Rust community that they feel they no longer need to persuade developers. It implies that many developers have already heard about and are interested in Rust, but need higher-ups to approve using it.
Well said. As a programmer I prefer the old site, however you bring up a good point. The new site is a lot better for people in management to see that Rust is used by other large companies and to not immediately discredit it.
The new subtitle "The programming language that empowers everyone to become a systems programmer" is a perfect example of that.
Any C programmer can see it's factually false, but it could definitely suggest to a C-level exec that they'll have an easier time hiring in the future if they use this language.
I'm CEO of WSO2 and we are working on a programming language for writing microservices called 'Ballerina', and we host it's community at http://ballerina.io. Prior to the first public launch, I pulled 9 of our core community members into an offsite where we developed and implemented the web site.
It was a challenging exercise and so can relate to Rust's community efforts to the redesign. I wanted to offer some perspectives of what Rust's challenges must be.
1. It is really hard to capture the value proposition for a programming language. While working through Ballerina, there is a hard balance between a) describing the language design, b) explaining why language elements are valuable, c) describe the key types of programming workloads that most benefit from your language philosophy, d) direct those interested to learn more to the right information, efficiently.
2. As such, whomever is leading the Rust site evolution over the years shows a real touch and depth for messaging. It takes a lot of insight and careful observation to your community over an extended period of time to tease out which elements are fundamentally what is driving your audience. Having said this, I have a tendency to feel that the messaging in the latest version might be creating a messaging abstraction trying to appeal to a wider developer base vs. the messaging in the current site which is more strongly appealing to existing system developers. Is this a conscious choice of the Rust team?
3. The rust team has figured out, through years of promotion, that the first (and last) question language teams get is always about "who's using the language? how big is the community?". The hardest part about birthing a language is the chicken and egg problem - someone needs to be the first big production app. Dogfooding is really the only way. Rust takes this head on.
I am not a big design person, so don't have an opinion about whether the minimalistic design is better than the new flowing design. A lot of the design influences for ballerina.io came from Go and Rust lang's web site - we are fans! So, I guess you could say that we prefer the minimalism concept.
It's pretty clear that they are pivoting their messaging to go after a wider developer base. I just don't understand why they did it in the way that they did. Rust already has a huge value proposition for any company that wants to use it in the form of hard memory safety. Just look at the number of high profile memory leak related problems in the last 5 years adding up to 100's of millions of dollars in damages. Billions if you count flow down effects. Companies care about cash and risk, managers care about not being the one who signed off on the next Heartbleed. Forced memory safety also means that you don't have to worry as much about junior developers making the errors that lead to those catastrophic problems and allow you to lower your hiring costs (sorta, think like a manager) and have less time spent by your senior developers checking for those often very hard to find problems.
What I really think Rust needs to grab a wide audience is an out of the box just works IDE. Also too many libraries require nightly, which is a nightmare for a business that must have stable code for deployment.
Edit: They previous had their value proposition as their slogan. It needed work for directing, i.e. don't talk about what Rust does, talk about what Rust does for you. They took it out and replaced it with a mostly meaningless catchphrase.
That doesn't actually address the problem with their old slogan.
The most damning thing about the redesign is where did the link to the documentation go? All the most important stuff for people actually using the language got buried.
The colors, the fonts and the thick bars behind the headlines are really distracting and most important: example code on the front is missing as well as the clearly stated list of features ("zero-cost abstractions, move semantics, guaranteed memory safety [...]").
The buttons in the "get involved" section should better be labeled "read the book", "watch videos" and "read contribution guide".
The z-index of the "Click here to try out the new beta site!" banner on rust-lang.org is wrong when scrolling down.
The old site was pleasantly minimal, easy to find the important things at a glance, and fit everything into a single screen.
The new one overloads you with bright, ever changing colors and useless marketing, while hiding important stuff like language documentation into a tiny link at the very bottom, next to the site terms and conditions.
Feature request: A documentation search bar right at the top on the homepage. As an existing user, that's usually the first thing I want to see. After that, a link to browse the documentation. Then a link to install it.
When looking at the home page, I don't know what "Get started" is going to take me to, but experience with other sites has given me a bad taste with "Get started" buttons. (The content it leads to here is good, though much of it would have been better put on the front page.)
Personally, I think trying to sell the language on the homepage is the wrong goal. I like language examples on the homepage to make a snap judgement about a language. If I can't see an example, I'm going to assume that there is a reason you don't want me to see it.
If I'm unfamiliar with the language, the things I want are:
* A code example
* A listing of properties of the language (e.g. statically typed, compiled, no gc, memory managed at compile time, etc)
* A command to install it
* A link to a tutorial where I can quickly try out the basics
* A link to the documentation so I can get a sense of its quality
I liked the old site better. It looked like a site about Rust programming language. It had the benefits of the language on it, this new site doesn't look like a site for programmers at all.
It now just looks like every other generic looking product page out there.
I think if I had come to this new site, and not the old site, I might not have bothered to even try Rust out. The new look is just so 'meh'.
I'm disappointed that the Rust community is moving from open IRC to proprietary Discord. Sure, people think IRC is archaic, but for them, the Discourse-based forum is plenty modern, isn't it? The fact that Discord is proprietary means that people aren't free to use any alternative client they want. This is especially problematic for people who aren't well served by the official client, e.g. blind people.
Discourse is for async communication, you need both.
We love open source, but it’s one of many options to weigh. They’re also a production user of Rust, which is a pro. It’s not that there are no cons, of course... there’s just really no perfect option in this space.
This website seems like they are targeting CEO and CTO's. The website looks very much like a business website trying to get corporations to sign up. The old website felt it was targeting programmers with it's code sample that you could modify and run directly on the web page.
Yes exactly! The content targetting "system programmers" is odd as Rust is great for so much more like the examples towards the bottom about webassembly and such.
Additionally the website seems to take longer to load.
Rule #1 of useful programming language websites is to have some sample code above the fold. With this design, I'm not sure where I'm even supposed to go to find some. I'm surprised at how decent it looks visually on my phone, despite my disliking the color scheme. But please, you're not selling some amorphous, all-singing, all-dancing enterprise product, you're trying to tell us about a programming language. So tell us about the language.
The one thing that I noticed immediately is that it sends all visitors' data to Google by means of embedding a Google Calendar. I'd like it more if the "Upcoming Events" panel listed the N upcoming events with a link to the Google Calendar, so that users can decide whether to send data to Google servers.
Old website looked like made by well meaning technical people who do not have all the time in world to make website with all the latest fads in web design.
New one looks like some shady marketing crap put together with off-the-shelf components like bootstrap libs. But it does 'empowers everyone'. May be they can add 'No programer left behind' and we all be happy.
I honestly can't look at the page for more than a few seconds without feeling very nauseous. The stark color changes everywhere make it hard to scan the page for relevant information. It feels way too distracting. I really like Guile's front page. It's very easy on the eyes and yet provides a lot of useful information: https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/
In general I like the approach of the beta website, though I prefer the very simple visual style of the current one.
The one main objection is the new slogan.
> Rust: The programming language that empowers everyone to become a systems programmer.
They claim it better conveys "what you can do with Rust", but in my opinion being a systems programmer is not more descriptive than the previous statement and it can be read as Rust not being a good choice for anything else than traditional systems programming, which is obviously not true.
Additionally, and this is subjective, I perceive an elitist tone, as in somehow all other programmers should aim to become system programmers, a more elevated type of programmer. I get this is not the intention and I repeat it's subjective, but still.
Also, systems programming is about so much more than being good a programming in a particular language. Programming in rust doesn't make you understand memory barriers.
I mean, it's ok. But language sites should have examples of the language on their home page and this removes that in favour of a load of marketing fluff. That is just wrong.
I get that you want to say what works well with Rust, but frankly few of these things are unique to Rust. With minimal changes I could turn this page into one advertising C++ or D.
It's ok to add the new content but the code example and list of unique features shouldn't have been removed.
I prefered the old slogan. It actually told me a bit about the language and made me curious to pick it up.
The new slogan does not do that for me. But I might not be their main target - I like programming languages for the code itself and not the applications/domains where I can use it.
The website didn't need a redesign either imo, but it is better than the changed slogan.
I'm not a huge fan, but it's not bad. Some Rust sponsors have their big logos on there, and the Rust Book (the real documentation) is at the very bottom of the page.
[+] [-] mjw1007|7 years ago|reply
The old site said to me "Here's a programming language made by programmers for programmers.".
The new site says to me "Here's a programming language which has a marketing team.".
The "Featuring" bullet list was an excellent way of calling out what makes Rust distinctive, and I felt I could trust what it said to be basically true.
But claims like "empowers everyone to become a systems programmer" or "Rust has great documentation", coming from the language's own designers, convey little information: they might be an over-optimistic view.
(Or, in the language of the blog post: I trust them to tell me what a fireflower is. I'd rather judge for myself whether I believe that it will turn me into Fire Mario.)
[+] [-] ajkjk|7 years ago|reply
The new version is corporate-speak that won't appeal to.. anyone? Its underlying message is "we're trying to get you to like us and we studied how to do this".
But, like, what's the point of a programming language's website anyway? Most people who visit the site will probably be at least vaguely aware of it. You use it if recommendations online, code samples, etc are compelling, and if the early adoption story (examples and motivations) are compelling. All I ever want is a list of examples up front and center. The more words I have to get through that aren't literal actual examples that show both what the language looks like and what differentiates it... the more exhausting the whole experience.
[+] [-] geodel|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ipsum2|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamescostian|7 years ago|reply
But, in my (useless) opinion, the green is... "bold", and that part isn't very modern or approachable
[+] [-] jszymborski|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gaigepr|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TylerE|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alain_gilbert|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrepd|7 years ago|reply
Wait, let's throw all that away and develop a vomit-inducing monstrosity, complete with: in-your-face extra-bold title headers, jarring colours and colour changes, overall very large design suitable for tablets and not desktops (which is after all where most of your target audience should be accessing from)... What a complete cock-up. The web design equivalent of painting flames on your car: an immature attempt to look "cool" that turns the thing into an horrendous mess.
I can only sincerely ask why why why.
[+] [-] bsder|7 years ago|reply
Ferociously bad doesn't even begin to cover it.
This is a result of Rust attempting to be "social ecosystem" instead of a "useful programming language". Sigh.
If you really wanted to improve the current website, make the "Featuring" bullets actually change the code in the runbox. Now THAT would be impressive so that people can actually see what all the fuss actually looks like.
As for the new site, I'll leave the cosmetics to people far more qualified to judge.
However, as someone who works in embedded and has been tracking Rust, the idea of putting "Embedded" on the front page and trying to advertise Rust as a useful embedded language isn't just laughable--it's dangerous. Rust is so far from useful in embedded that people who try to use it will NEVER come back and they will report to their managers that it shouldn't even be looked at for another 5-10 years.
Until I can sit down with a sparkly new Windows 10 VM, plug my board in via USB, fire of a Windows installer, double-click on a selection dialog for my current evaluation board, watch it crunch and then pop up a Debug windows with an LED blinking, we're not even at the starting line. (Most environments for embedded now are pretty good about this--getting your blinking LED really is the "Hello, World!" equivalent).
[+] [-] keyle|7 years ago|reply
Classic case of "my nephew can do it with paint shop pro".
[+] [-] kjeetgill|7 years ago|reply
That's what the whole post is about: why. There's plenty of room for critical opinions, but at least address the started rationale.
They had a problem that wasn't yours: they're trying to reach an audience they don't have yet and they think this might. They what to address the why you might want Rust, not the what it is, or how it does it exactly.
Disagree with that.
[+] [-] duncan-donuts|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vtesucks|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shafte|7 years ago|reply
It's a sign of the strength of the Rust community that they feel they no longer need to persuade developers. It implies that many developers have already heard about and are interested in Rust, but need higher-ups to approve using it.
[+] [-] asauce|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ken|7 years ago|reply
Any C programmer can see it's factually false, but it could definitely suggest to a C-level exec that they'll have an easier time hiring in the future if they use this language.
[+] [-] androidgirl|7 years ago|reply
I love the use of color, it's very dynamic and "fun", and the typography is nice in my opinion as well. It's more engaging to me, at least.
[+] [-] TylerJewell|7 years ago|reply
It was a challenging exercise and so can relate to Rust's community efforts to the redesign. I wanted to offer some perspectives of what Rust's challenges must be.
1. It is really hard to capture the value proposition for a programming language. While working through Ballerina, there is a hard balance between a) describing the language design, b) explaining why language elements are valuable, c) describe the key types of programming workloads that most benefit from your language philosophy, d) direct those interested to learn more to the right information, efficiently.
2. As such, whomever is leading the Rust site evolution over the years shows a real touch and depth for messaging. It takes a lot of insight and careful observation to your community over an extended period of time to tease out which elements are fundamentally what is driving your audience. Having said this, I have a tendency to feel that the messaging in the latest version might be creating a messaging abstraction trying to appeal to a wider developer base vs. the messaging in the current site which is more strongly appealing to existing system developers. Is this a conscious choice of the Rust team?
3. The rust team has figured out, through years of promotion, that the first (and last) question language teams get is always about "who's using the language? how big is the community?". The hardest part about birthing a language is the chicken and egg problem - someone needs to be the first big production app. Dogfooding is really the only way. Rust takes this head on.
I am not a big design person, so don't have an opinion about whether the minimalistic design is better than the new flowing design. A lot of the design influences for ballerina.io came from Go and Rust lang's web site - we are fans! So, I guess you could say that we prefer the minimalism concept.
[+] [-] Junk_Collector|7 years ago|reply
What I really think Rust needs to grab a wide audience is an out of the box just works IDE. Also too many libraries require nightly, which is a nightmare for a business that must have stable code for deployment.
Edit: They previous had their value proposition as their slogan. It needed work for directing, i.e. don't talk about what Rust does, talk about what Rust does for you. They took it out and replaced it with a mostly meaningless catchphrase. That doesn't actually address the problem with their old slogan.
The most damning thing about the redesign is where did the link to the documentation go? All the most important stuff for people actually using the language got buried.
[+] [-] steveklabnik|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vtesucks|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] laszlokorte|7 years ago|reply
The buttons in the "get involved" section should better be labeled "read the book", "watch videos" and "read contribution guide".
The z-index of the "Click here to try out the new beta site!" banner on rust-lang.org is wrong when scrolling down.
[+] [-] laszlokorte|7 years ago|reply
I don't think those new playful colors will fit the whole ecosystem.
[+] [-] binarycrusader|7 years ago|reply
In particular, the "fuschia" background color makes for poor readability (at least for me).
[+] [-] deogeo|7 years ago|reply
The new one overloads you with bright, ever changing colors and useless marketing, while hiding important stuff like language documentation into a tiny link at the very bottom, next to the site terms and conditions.
It is dazzle camouflage [0] for information.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage
[+] [-] piinbinary|7 years ago|reply
When looking at the home page, I don't know what "Get started" is going to take me to, but experience with other sites has given me a bad taste with "Get started" buttons. (The content it leads to here is good, though much of it would have been better put on the front page.)
Personally, I think trying to sell the language on the homepage is the wrong goal. I like language examples on the homepage to make a snap judgement about a language. If I can't see an example, I'm going to assume that there is a reason you don't want me to see it.
If I'm unfamiliar with the language, the things I want are:
* A code example
* A listing of properties of the language (e.g. statically typed, compiled, no gc, memory managed at compile time, etc)
* A command to install it
* A link to a tutorial where I can quickly try out the basics
* A link to the documentation so I can get a sense of its quality
* A link to the github page
[+] [-] steveklabnik|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LandR|7 years ago|reply
It now just looks like every other generic looking product page out there.
I think if I had come to this new site, and not the old site, I might not have bothered to even try Rust out. The new look is just so 'meh'.
[+] [-] nathanaldensr|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mwcampbell|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steveklabnik|7 years ago|reply
We love open source, but it’s one of many options to weigh. They’re also a production user of Rust, which is a pro. It’s not that there are no cons, of course... there’s just really no perfect option in this space.
[+] [-] RcouF1uZ4gsC|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Siilwyn|7 years ago|reply
Additionally the website seems to take longer to load.
[+] [-] andrewflnr|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] majewsky|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geodel|7 years ago|reply
New one looks like some shady marketing crap put together with off-the-shelf components like bootstrap libs. But it does 'empowers everyone'. May be they can add 'No programer left behind' and we all be happy.
[+] [-] xedrac|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kiliancs|7 years ago|reply
The one main objection is the new slogan.
> Rust: The programming language that empowers everyone to become a systems programmer.
They claim it better conveys "what you can do with Rust", but in my opinion being a systems programmer is not more descriptive than the previous statement and it can be read as Rust not being a good choice for anything else than traditional systems programming, which is obviously not true.
Additionally, and this is subjective, I perceive an elitist tone, as in somehow all other programmers should aim to become system programmers, a more elevated type of programmer. I get this is not the intention and I repeat it's subjective, but still.
[+] [-] Skunkleton|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IshKebab|7 years ago|reply
I get that you want to say what works well with Rust, but frankly few of these things are unique to Rust. With minimal changes I could turn this page into one advertising C++ or D.
It's ok to add the new content but the code example and list of unique features shouldn't have been removed.
[+] [-] Insanity|7 years ago|reply
The new slogan does not do that for me. But I might not be their main target - I like programming languages for the code itself and not the applications/domains where I can use it.
The website didn't need a redesign either imo, but it is better than the changed slogan.
[+] [-] unethical_ban|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tphan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] knrz|7 years ago|reply
Is there a way to have good keyboard support & have it look good?
[+] [-] steveklabnik|7 years ago|reply