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0 pointssteveklabnik6y ago0 comments

We (Rust) took a lot of inspiration from Elm here.

One similarity to this post that sticks out:

> Maybe you just try the JavaScript way to see if it works:

Given that the final syntax for async/await was a bit controversial (postfix .await), the compile folks implemented parsing for (at least) the JavaScript way of doing it, and so you get a good error message telling you the correct way:

    error: incorrect use of `await`
     --> src/lib.rs:2:5
      |
    2 |     await bar()
      |     ^^^^^^^^^^^ help: `await` is a postfix operation: `bar().await`

This kind of thing can really help polyglots, as well as people new to the language.

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4 comments · 2 top-level

gavinray6y ago· 2 in thread

Polyglot developer here

I have not personally had the usecase for Rust just yet, but it is the only language I have never heard a negative thing about. That's huge, with how opinionated developers are.

The arguments for the language and general consensus are so strongly positive that without having used it myself I frequently recommend it (I passively follow the language's progress online).

A huge part of it is the developer ergonomics, a large amount of which comes from your compiler error messages.

When I talk to people about the gold standards, Rust and Elm are the examples I give.

Thank you guys for all your work!

tudelo6y ago

Try to write a small program (a basic interpreter or something like that) and i bet you will have some gripes with Rust... I found that it was an extremely slow language to ramp up on.

skohan6y ago

Same. I have mixed feelings about it. The tooling is great, but I'm not totally convinced the borrow checker is the be-all, end-all of memory management it's sometimes made out to be. Also some of the decisions around syntax are questionable to me, like lack of top-level-inference just feels like a step backward compared to languages which have it. Also while the trait system and macros are really powerful, a lot of times how they are used by libraries seems quite magical, and it takes a lot of digging through documentation and sometimes source to really understand how things work.

Still in spite of that, I think it's an awesome project with a lot of enthusiasm behind it, and I'm happy to see languages exploring new ideas getting so much attention.

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methehack6y ago

It really stands out with Elm and Rust and is much appreciated.

A human/e interface to compiler errors is critical to me. It means the difference between the compiler being an ally and the compiler being an enemy (or maybe a teacher who thinks you're just a bad student and is going to give you a bad grade no matter what, not that there's any scar tissue there).

Matters the world to me personally in terms of my enjoyment and flow and represents the kind of computing I want to do.

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