Is it obscuring the logic to explicitly handle the cases where an item may not exist, or to tell an engineer when they are copying memory? In my opinion it's the opposite.
When you want to write some simple test code to solve a problem, then it is absolutely obscuring the logic to write out all the details of memory management.
Some people in this thread have made the claim that Rust is okay for quick hacky code to work out a solution to a problem, because you can just pepper your code with unwrap and clone and then factor them out later during optimisation. The point I am making is that even if that approach works[0], it heavily obscures your business logic to have it peppered with memory management details when you're just trying to figure out a basic algorithm to solve a problem.
The approach I much prefer is to Plan to Throw One Away[1]. I'd rather work out the solution to my problem in a slow and dynamic language like Python, and then either rewrite it entirely in C or, if possible, just rewrite some inner loop in C and call it from Python.
[0]: I don't think this approach actually works. You can't take a program that has been designed around copying data absolutely everywhere, all over the place, and make it very efficient. You can make it more efficient than it was originally, but I've never seen it done. You can only really work out the right way to manage memory when you know the algorithm, and you can only know the algorithm once you are done. Refactoring from one memory management strategy to another might be possible in theory but is awful in practice, even in Rust.
I know where you're at because I used to feel the same way. But what if rust was designed to make manual memory management as painless as possible? IE, it's the antithesis of a language like C because when you learn it's syntax all practical memory management is done by basically writing OCAML.
In rust there are two forms of memory management,
1. You write rust.
2. You write unsafe rust.
You never really have to refactor to suite a different style. Infact changing allocators is as simple as running "cargo install".
Rust isn't as bad as people make it out to be but you do have to invest some time to learning it.
But as far as throw one away goes... You can write it in rust, and then slightly adjust when you do things like clone so nothing gets thrown away unless you really botched it the first time you wrote it.
memefrog|2 years ago
Some people in this thread have made the claim that Rust is okay for quick hacky code to work out a solution to a problem, because you can just pepper your code with unwrap and clone and then factor them out later during optimisation. The point I am making is that even if that approach works[0], it heavily obscures your business logic to have it peppered with memory management details when you're just trying to figure out a basic algorithm to solve a problem.
The approach I much prefer is to Plan to Throw One Away[1]. I'd rather work out the solution to my problem in a slow and dynamic language like Python, and then either rewrite it entirely in C or, if possible, just rewrite some inner loop in C and call it from Python.
[0]: I don't think this approach actually works. You can't take a program that has been designed around copying data absolutely everywhere, all over the place, and make it very efficient. You can make it more efficient than it was originally, but I've never seen it done. You can only really work out the right way to manage memory when you know the algorithm, and you can only know the algorithm once you are done. Refactoring from one memory management strategy to another might be possible in theory but is awful in practice, even in Rust.
[1]: https://wiki.c2.com/?PlanToThrowOneAway
thumbuddy|2 years ago
In rust there are two forms of memory management, 1. You write rust. 2. You write unsafe rust.
You never really have to refactor to suite a different style. Infact changing allocators is as simple as running "cargo install".
Rust isn't as bad as people make it out to be but you do have to invest some time to learning it.
But as far as throw one away goes... You can write it in rust, and then slightly adjust when you do things like clone so nothing gets thrown away unless you really botched it the first time you wrote it.