Ask HN: Fluent in go and Rust? Which one do you prefer and why?

12 pointsmanx1y ago8 comments

You should have done at least a full project in both, a bit more than just scratching the surface.

I find opinions from people who only know one side not very useful, because they're usually judging on how they are imagining things to be, rather than how they would see things after giving it a serious chance.

Talking to an expert who knows both sides well is usually more nuanced.

I hope that makes sense. If this gives good responses, I would like to ask the same question about other polarizing technologies and paradigms. Like dynamic vs static typing for example.

Ask HN: Fluent in go and Rust? Which one do you prefer and why?

12 pointsmanx1y ago8 comments

You should have done at least a full project in both, a bit more than just scratching the surface.

Talking to an expert who knows both sides well is usually more nuanced.

I hope that makes sense. If this gives good responses, I would like to ask the same question about other polarizing technologies and paradigms. Like dynamic vs static typing for example.

8 comments

8 comments · 4 top-level

MeetingsBrowser1y ago· 3 in thread

Depends on what you are doing, but without additional constraints the real answer is probably python.

cdaringe1y ago

python trades speed and correctness heavily in favor of dx. Other languages provide drastically increased speed and correctness with comparable dx. I understand that lang pref extremely subjective, but if those high level values are THE metrics to analyze on (+domain), I’d courteously suggest that there are greener pastures.

https://cdaringe.github.io/programming-language-selector/

MeetingsBrowser1y ago

The linked tool does not give any suggestions without choosing a subdomain, but if you average the DX suggestions for each domain the top result is javascript. I don't know many sane people who would argue javascript has a better DX than python.

> Other languages provide drastically increased speed and correctness with comparable dx.

Like what?

IMO javascript has both terrible DX and performance and should be avoided unless you are doing front end.

Go quite a bit of boilerplate and initial setup to get going. It also requires you to think about pointer, pass by value vs reference, etc.

You can get someone who is brand new to programming writing simple Python scripts in less than an hour.

purple-leafy1y ago

Python DX is terrible, Go DX is awesome

revskill1y ago· 1 in thread

Use typescript first.

MeetingsBrowser1y ago

I start with bash and work my way up as needed

a_tartaruga1y ago

For me golang vibes are better.

Go is a little too verbose but in a stupid way. Rust is too verbose in a clever way. Go is so dumb it is mind numbingly boring. Rust is so clever it becomes boring to learn.

You can use go in about 1 way that works. Rust you can use in many different ways. My guess is that really knowing rust is 2-5x harder than really knowing go.

To really get into go you need to understand the runtime, scheduling and especially GC. For rust you need to at least understand the compiler the macro language and of course the borrow checker. Then if you want to do concurrency you need to look into async await or whatever is going on these days.

For whatever reason I find the go runtime fun to learn about and the rust compiler tedious to learn about.

Go tools are smoother and easier to learn. I know it makes me a philistine but fast compile times are nice.

neonsunset1y ago

C#, F# and Rust of course. Go is not needed, and is sometimes harmful to the projects that use it.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

8 comments

8 comments · 4 top-level

MeetingsBrowser1y ago· 3 in thread

Depends on what you are doing, but without additional constraints the real answer is probably python.

cdaringe1y ago

https://cdaringe.github.io/programming-language-selector/

MeetingsBrowser1y ago

> Other languages provide drastically increased speed and correctness with comparable dx.

Like what?

IMO javascript has both terrible DX and performance and should be avoided unless you are doing front end.

Go quite a bit of boilerplate and initial setup to get going. It also requires you to think about pointer, pass by value vs reference, etc.

You can get someone who is brand new to programming writing simple Python scripts in less than an hour.

purple-leafy1y ago

Python DX is terrible, Go DX is awesome

revskill1y ago· 1 in thread

Use typescript first.

MeetingsBrowser1y ago

I start with bash and work my way up as needed

a_tartaruga1y ago

For me golang vibes are better.

Go is a little too verbose but in a stupid way. Rust is too verbose in a clever way. Go is so dumb it is mind numbingly boring. Rust is so clever it becomes boring to learn.

You can use go in about 1 way that works. Rust you can use in many different ways. My guess is that really knowing rust is 2-5x harder than really knowing go.

For whatever reason I find the go runtime fun to learn about and the rust compiler tedious to learn about.

Go tools are smoother and easier to learn. I know it makes me a philistine but fast compile times are nice.

neonsunset1y ago

C#, F# and Rust of course. Go is not needed, and is sometimes harmful to the projects that use it.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse