Right and C has a special place in my heart. I have never coded C in anger, but the weird thing about coding in Java is how low level all the implementations are. I've had this debate/ conversation with people over the years and I realize that if I am the only one at a certain position, then I am wrong and not everyone else.
But I claim that Rust is actually a high level language. Higher level than Java. My argument is that in Rust (, F# and Scala) you can encode in structure, what has to be operational code in Java.
So in the stronger languages you can reason about larger swaths about domain concepts easily, whereas in Java you have to trust the test panel on faith and wade through deep sections of "magic code" (compare with magic numbers. Why is there a 427/ these 7 lines of logic here? What does it do?)
I am not. I am saying that had I been a good little Java/ C# developer, then I would never have learned Rust and all of the things that come with that.
Scala is not doing great, probably because they took too long to get 3 finished and good.
Yes. Companies are going back to Java because this is what all the convervative guys and girls want to use. That fact is what I am criticizing. You want fast horses, you don't want nice things.
So now you have Maven, semi-typed code intermingled with container logic because you cannot abstract over anything, you have millions of lines of impenetrable tests. Just like we all did in 2006. You all love this because learning things is not your forte :) That other stuff is for academics and niche.
This is just not true, the last bit you say. That is the same old trope about F#, Rust or Scala being niche, things people that don't have to earn money or feed children can do. I worked 100% in those languages from 2012 through 2023.
But sure, with AI, maybe this will matter less because people don't care about the code anymore.
This rests entirely on the same same sort of conservative attitude towards new experiences that holds the other half of the development world back. The Java world. People generally do not want to learn new things, they want "faster horses", which incidentally is what C# and Java is these days.
This is why we can't have nice things.
Java with Streams and "functions" is a lot better than what I left behind 15 years ago. But it is still extremely primitive compared to what F#, Rust and Scala offers. And I know this because I have spent 10+ years EACH using all of these in anger. So 20+ years.
I guess that depends on what goals you have in mind. If they are producing a correct program, then having the compiler verify your assumptions, forcing you do deal with domain complexity upfront is one way to do that. Tests( driven development) is another one.
But in this context I feel that partial solutions are offered as alternatives to more complete ones. I.e.: if holes in your trousers is of no concern, then having tools to avoid that is of no value.
Not picking on C here, as already mentioned, it is a wonderful language.
Unless you or him define what you mean by complexity, we are not going to be able to come to an agreement there. This line of reasoning, it seems to me, is making the case that C is more complex than Assembly because the former has a number of formalizing, let's say, concepts that are not in assembly.
I would on the contrary say that adding extra static checking deducts from the _actual_ complexity of the domain and its application.
Still not picking on C++ here. I would claim that these concepts pretty much all exist in C++ too, but often implicitly so. You would solve them by "braining them", with good rules of thumb, patterns, tests and deep knowledge and skill. In fact, you _have_ to solve them this way.
In Rust the compiler is going to have a problem with your code unless you are explicit about borrowing/ ownership, gcc won't care. Which is the more complex thing there?
Same goes for the polymorphism. Looking at languages without parametric polymorphism, you instead see casts and inheritance trees. Not picking on old Java here, but is this more or less complex?
Let's talk some about unsafe as well. In C or C++, for instance, there is a global unsafe surrounding all the code, so if someone has problem with unsafe, why would they pick on Rust where "unsafety" is optional?
Same goes for unwrap. Unwrap is basically a deref combined with a _safe_ crash if the deref was not successful at runtime. Do that in an unsafe language and you have an access violation best case. Or just silent corruption. Which is more complex?
I reject the whole Rust has a high complexity premise, but I would gladly continue our conversation around it here but I would need a little more definition for that to be possible.
What do you mean by complexity in this context and in what way does Rust carry a lot of it?
I would argue that what you call complexity here is better referred to as explicit or visible complexity, as compared to hidden or implicit commplexity. The complexity as such comes with the domain and its application; but with Rust you can see it and you are forced to deal. With C++ you can get away with pretending that it is in fact not there.
This is honestly not intended to pick on C++ as a Rust fanboy, however. It really isn't.
For instance, to be a little unpolished, I would shrug off the unwrap incident as doing it the C++ way and pretending that the complexity does not need to be solved right then and there because ItShouldNotHappen or IKnowWhatIAmDoing.
I prefer Rust over C++, but I do not hate C++. This isn't even about C++ anyway.
When it comes to out of control dependency trees, I agree with you. But there is a trade off here too and that is that either you implement the thing or you externalize it. I use both approaches myself and am in no way excusing anything or attempting to be Rust's defense lawyer. There definitely seems to be a leftpad-problem brewing in the Rust community.
I was one of these "smart students" but it really wasn't that I did not want to be there. I was a lazy, or complacent, f*ck. I've have had to learn how to learn and how to have discipline late(r) in life.
This is again conflating at least two things and this is so prevalent in this context. Let us not conflate how annoying DRM:s are to us users that buy the things, with pirates thinking they somehow have a right to use any software without paying fairly for it. I would even go as far as to say that you pirates are the reason I have to have a DRM in the shit I bought and paid for.
I don't think I can agree with you here because a lot of these things that people know but that is supposedly hard to dress in words, is very often just positions that someone holds arbitrarily, so is difficult to impossible to explain. The positions do not have explanations because they are not held for good reason.
I say this as someone with 3 decades of professional experience. That does not make me right, please do tell me that I am in fact wrong! It does mean that I might be one of these guys with positions that should be challenged, however.
You know what? I welcome this. Explain to me why I am wrong, let's do it your way, dear youngin!
OCaml is wonderful too but having written F# for different companies for years, my code is pretty much never that hybrid stuff. Sure, .NET:s weird asynch apis, sometimes the code comes out a little bit weird but that is the exception to the rule imho.