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namjh | 1 year ago

IMHO the mentioned examples of complexity like multiple type variables and lifetimes with bounds are for who "really" wants compile-time contracts. These are mostly opt-in so higher level use cases(like writing backend business logics) should not care about that, just wrapping everything with Boxes and Arcs.

Of course Rust is not perfect; there is some 'leakages' of low level aspects to high level like async caveats(recursion, pinning, etc.). I'm not sure how these can be avoided. Maybe just trial-and-errors for all..?

discuss

order

Hamuko|1 year ago

I do remember the compiler constantly suggesting lifetimes to me as a newcomer to the language, so it didn't really feel that opt-in. Quite a lot of the suggestions also started to look like someone poured alphabet soup all over the code.

namjh|1 year ago

That's because the code triggering compilation error is using reference. If you use Rc or Arc (which pays runtime cost) there should be no lifetime at all.

Albeit I admit there somewhat exists a community sentiment like "if you use Rust, you should maximize its zero cost abstraction feature so lifetime is good and generics good", and my (minor) opinion is that, it's not always true to all users of Rust.

And the clumsy Arc<Mutex<Something<TheOtherThing>>> makes users feel bad about using runtime cost paid types. Maybe we should introduce easy Rust dialect which transpiles into Rc/Clone everywhere but I doubt it's trivial to transpile.

scotty79|1 year ago

That's mostly because borrows are a curiosity of Rust that newcommers are quickly introduced to while they are mostly just a perfomance gimmick.

If you come to rust from high level language you can just do everything with Rc and cloning.

It's still hard because Rust, in opposition to every pipular language, is a value oriented language. But at least you won't have much contact with alphabet soup.