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How Rust Can Replace C In Python Libraries (infoworld.com)
An anonymous reader quotes InfoWorld:
Proponents of Rust, the language engineered by Mozilla to give developers both speed and memory safety, are stumping for the language as a long-term replacement for C and C++. But replacing software written in these languages can be a difficult, long-term project. One place where Rust could supplant C in the short term is in the traditionally C libraries used in other languages... [A] new spate of projects are making it easier to develop Rust libraries with convenient bindings to Python -- and to deploy Python packages that have Rust binaries.
The article specifically highlights these four new projects:
The article specifically highlights these four new projects:
- Rust-CPython - a set of bindings in Rust for the CPython runtime
- PyO3 - a basic way to write Rust software with bindings to Python in both directions.
- Snaek - lets developers create Rust libraries that are loaded dynamically into Python as needed, but don't rely on being linked statically against Python's runtime.
- Cookiecutter PyPackage Rust Cross-Platform Publish - simplifies the process of bundling Rust binaries with a Python library.
Why use the new language of the month when C has been around for decades, is welll understood and does exactly what we want?
How long before I start replacing rust with decay? 6 months? A year?
And wake me up when Rust stop being a cult and becomes an actually useful language.
I've read a third of the Rust nightly book and watched many, many Rust videos on youtube. I like Rust very much. However, I believe Rust was invented by, is sponsored by, and gets it's major funding from the Mozilla foundation. There is essentially no more Mozilla Thunderbird, and the Mozilla Firefox browser is getting significantly less usage. We've had articles on such here on Slashdot. If the Mozilla browser itself falters any more, would Mozilla, and hence rust, stay alive?
Rust is very tied to Mozilla. And Mozilla's only remaining "successful" product is Firefox. But Firefox's market share is dropping. It was only a few percent, last I saw, while Chrome is over 50%. Mozilla reportedly gets a lot of funding from Yahoo, due to a Firefox search deal. So here we have an organization with one major product, but this project is being rejected by consumers, and what might be this organization's most significant source of revenue comes from this failing product and is paid for by another company that isn't doing so well. I fear for Mozilla's future if, say, the Yahoo deal wasn't renewed and they couldn't find a replacement.
If Mozilla goes the way of the dodo bird, then I can't see the Rust project really going anywhere. I don't think it has a robust independent community like C++ has, for example.
I think it is too risky to adopt Rust, especially for important long term projects. The tech industry moves fast. Rust could plausibly be gone in 3 years, while languages like C, C++ and even PHP are far more likely to be going strong.
I was interested in learning Rust and perhaps using it for some personal projects, but then I discovered how the community seems to care so much about social engineering.
We're not allowed to use "Master" and "Slave". https://github.com/rust-lang/rust-buildbot/issues/2
We're required to rephrase old texts to fit into "gender non-binary" language. https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/25640
I'm sure they don't have problems "killing child processes" though...
etc., etc.
I'm not interested in using a programming language as some kind of social engineering experiment.
What I don't get is why the Rust community lacks diversity, despite them putting so much emphasis on supposedly supporting diversity.
Years ago, back when I was a Java developer, I would sometimes go to Java conferences. There would be men there. There would be women there. There were probably transsexuals there. There would be old adults and young adults. There would be people representing every possible skin color. There would be somebody from pretty much every major ethnicity. There would be practitioners of pretty much every major religion. There was true diversity, without anyone actually trying to impose it through Codes of Conducts and Moderation Teams and "initiatives" and "affirmative action".
Yet here we have Rust, with its invasive Code of Conduct, and the Rust Moderation Team to force it on the community, and all of its focus on "diversity" and "social justice". But when we look at the profile pictures of Rust's contributors, they appear to mostly be mid-20s white males (I'm assuming "steveklabnik" is a male).
Now don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with being a mid-20s white male programmer. This isn't about singling anyone out, or about claiming that some mythical "privilege" exists, or anything like that.
The issue here is that it appears that the more that the Rust community intentionally pushes for "diversity", the less of that we actually see. Instead of seeing a naturally diverse community form on its own, like pretty much every other programming language has, we've seen Rust's community become extremely homogeneous.
It's as if the Rust community's efforts to force diversity on their community has actually had the complete opposite effect! While trying to create the most diverse community, they've actually only managed to create the least diverse one I've ever seen!
Something that gets this much hype cannot be good, or the hype would not be needed. Seems to me some cretins are using Rust as a religion-surrogate.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
.. when Linus decides the next major release is to be written in Rust.
... :)
Or for argument's sake, Mozilla itself.
Every language has it pitfalls, at least with ye olde C/C++ I know where to look and what to expect.
Suddenly you start to respect and embrace the get-off-my-lawn attitude, you simply want things to work rather than be written in the next greatest language of the moment.
I think I'm ready to deal with my dad now
I don't intend this to be taken as a joke in any way, nor do I intend it to be unnecessarily mean, but I think that the Rust community inadvertently discovered a new paradigm of software development: Autism-Driven Development.
When we look at what they've created, both from a technological standpoint and from a community standpoint, I can't help but notice the impact that Asperger Syndrome may have had on how things have developed.
Let's start with the community. While the communities of languages like Perl, C++, Python, Java and C# developed organically over time, it is almost as if the Rust community has been manufactured instead. It's like the community's interactions have been scripted, to use a programming analogy. It seems to me that the Rust Code of Conduct may actually be there as a way to allow people who suffer from varying degrees of social ineptitude to interact in a way that mimics how they see other, naturally-formed programming language communities made of sociable individuals interacting. They wouldn't be able to manage this social interaction on their own. But if you give them a script or a checklist they can follow, they can at least engage in something that appears, on the surface, to be socializing. That's why I think their incorporation of social justice is quite interesting. In many ways the concepts of social justice are all about imposing a foreign order on what is naturally a very chaotic and perhaps unfair reality.
The language and its standard library also reflect behavior that may be expected from those suffering from Asperger Syndrome. While creating the language, it is as if its developers haven't been able to make the normal trade-offs that other language developers have made with ease. We've seen this result in Rust, as a language, constantly change over time. It's like they're striving for some unattainable form of perfection that most normal people would realize could not be attained. While other people would accept some drawbacks to their creation and move on, the Rust community appears to waver back and forth, unable to really make up its mind about how to proceed. Even the supposedly stable Rust 1.x release branch has seen 19 minor releases!
I think the complexity of the language also reflects the role that, I suspect, Asperger Syndrome has had on the development of Rust. It has become an immensely complex and convoluted language, even compared to a rather complex language like C++. It's like the language has been designed, perhaps unintentionally, to be cryptic and unwelcoming to normal people. By its very nature it is like it is trying to be self-isolating, to avoid having to interact with the world and the people around it. Programming languages like Java, Python, C++, Perl and PHP want to be used by normal people. Those languages evolved in ways that draw in new users. But Rust? It has evolved to become very difficult and awkward to use, especially for new, average users.
From what I can see, the entire Rust ecosystem exhibits the traits that have come to be associated with Asperger Syndrome, or autism in general. Rust has a certain natural awkwardness to it; a inherent difference from every other programming language and programming language community that exists. It's like it wants to fit in, yet no matter how hard it tries it just can't. It's like, in my opinion, the entire Rust ecosystem lacks a natural understanding or ease of existence that other programming language ecosystems develop naturally.
I am just speculating here, as I do not know any of the Rust developers on any personal level, but could it be that mild/moderate autism or some degree of Asperger Syndrome has influenced how the Rust programming language has developed? If the developers of a programming language exhibit autism or Asperger Syndrome, could they in turn pass this on, so to speak, to a programming language and a related community that they have created? Could Rust be an example of, for lack of a better term, Autism-Driven Development?
They're really enthusiastic, mention that they think it's great at every opportunity, and can't understand when someone is underwhelmed by the object of their admiration....
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
This is what happens when developers make business decisions. Seriously, why is Mozilla focused on promoting/using/developing Rust, when they could be focused on making their browser suck less? Probably because they have no business concerns, at all, about making a viable product (or company.) I spent two weeks exclusively using Firefox, right when Google was found to be recording everything I said, in the event I happened to say "OK Google" without a way to turn this off. After two weeks, I realized I'd rather be bugged than use Firefox any longer.
This is exactly what Joel Spolsky wrote about, when Netscape did a complete rewrite here, or in his awesome book Joel on Software . Netscape focused on a rewrite, instead of making their browser suck less.
It sounds like Netscape made this mistake and then became Firefox. Now, it seems like Firefox is making the exact same mistake. This has to be the funniest business case study ever.