s_c_r

I like to find ways to use a variety of languages at work when it makes sense. For example, Python/Pandas is great for dealing with spreadsheets and other large data sets, Go gives a speed boost over interpreted languages for REST endpoints. JavaScript for front end stuff of course.

Try as I might, I can't think of any specific use case that makes Rust more compelling than another language for general programming tasks. I don't work with anything embedded or otherwise low level where the lack of a GC would be necessary. Are there any tasks you have found Rust to be a good fit for in your day job, where you otherwise might have reached another language?

I work for a small regional logistics company, and our CEO remarked the other day that he would be willing to spend thousands per month for a reliable route optimization service.

I felt this pain myself the other day. Our network was overloaded due to normal Christmas peak coupled with quarantine purchases and UPS/FedEx turning away excess volume. I’m not an ops guy but I volunteered to go out and make deliveries in my wife’s SUV. I wrote the React Native app our drivers use to make deliveries, and I thought it would be a good chance to see how my app performed in a real world scenario. Well, the app did a great job but the backend process that optimizes drivers’ routes left me thinking we can do better. More than once the route order would have taken me right by addresses that were down the road from each other.

I’m not sure exactly what the problem is really, and will be digging into that with our existing service. Maybe the larger number of residential addresses we deliver to these days compared to last year plays a part. We use here: https://developer.here.com/ It costs $500 a month. I’m interested in experimenting with the solutions that are out there, but a Google search brings up a wall of ads. Has anyone else experimented in this space? I realize traveling salesman will never be 100% solved, but I know there are a lot of people who are interested in finding a solution. What services or approaches have worked for you?

I know this has been discussed ad nauseam since the release but I’m still on the fence and looking for some perspectives from those who have taken the leap.

I have an old Dell gaming laptop that I dual boot Pop!_OS. It works well but has an Nvidia GPU that makes it heavy and I’m getting tired of lugging it back and forth to work (yeah, back in the office now).

Before the M1, I was planning to get an Intel MacBook and dual boot Linux on it. But with the performance and battery life of the M1, I’m on the fence. I know Linux isn’t supported natively yet, but I spend most of my time SSH’d into a headless Linux server anyway, or in a local Docker container. I hear Docker isn’t perfect on the M1 yet either so I would probably go all in on the headless server. I also do some React Native dev and the idea of a faster Xcode build is intriguing indeed. Thoughts? Would I be better off with a native a Linux experience or are the perf/battery advantages of the M1 worth putting up with Apple’s telemetry, etc?

Curious what others have experienced so far who bought an M1. Was it worth the money, and do you have any regrets?

I’m starting a new role that will be heavy on data analysis. In the past I’ve focused on web dev/CRUD apps using Go, JS, PHP, other web stuff. All that to say, this will be new territory for me. Conventional wisdom seems to be that Python is the tool of choice for data science type roles, along with pandas/numpy and Jupyter notebooks. That or maybe R or Julia. On the other hand I hear about how Clojure is great for data munging type tasks. I have no experience with lisps but I’m interested in dipping my toe in the water if it will be a good fit for what I’m going to be doing. Which one in your experience will pay off more in the long run? Python with its tooling and community or Clojure’s language design?

I've written a few web microservices in Rust that I otherwise would have written in Go, and really enjoyed the experience. After getting over the initial hump of learning how lifetimes and the borrow checker work, I would say I'm just as productive in Rust as I am in Go. If anything I end up writing fewer lines of code in Rust. The tooling is excellent, and even compilation times have gotten better.

My main concern is how many dependencies I end up with doing simple stuff like web requests and database queries. I just finished a script that uses reqwest, rust-postgres, and serde which compiles 221 crates! Am I doing something wrong? I used all of the generally "accepted" dependencies recommended for those tasks and it didn't seem like the Rust stdlib had much support for them. Contrast that with a similar app written in Go and the only dependency outside of the standard library that I needed was pq for Postgres.

I realize that Rust guarantees backwards compatibility for compilation, but what if I need to go back a year from now and make a bunch of changes to that script? Am I going to be in dependency hell like I would be in JavaScript? Are there any other compelling reasons to choose Rust over Go specifically for web services?

I work for a small regional shipping company, mostly building CRUD apps and doing EDI integrations. I'd like to find a practical side project using machine learning and/or data science that could add value at work, but for the life of me I can't come up with any problems that I couldn't solve with a relational database (postgres) and a data transformation step. I've spent some time learning pytorch, numpy, and pandas but I know that if I don't use it, especially at work, I'll just forget everything I've learned. My boss is a dev and is generally supportive of learning new things and finding ways to innovate independently, so if I can come up with a good idea I'm sure he'll let me pursue it in my spare time. Has anyone tried to do this before? Any suggestions would be great.