I am finally learning Rust!
I should have designed Rust. It's been clear for far too long that languages like C and even C++ are far too dangerous, unnecessarily allowing many classes of bug to exist, somehow in the name of power and being close to the metal. So many things that could be fixed with decent use of a type system and static checks. On the other hand, great languages like Haskell require GC, which makes them an odd choice for systems programming. Go says "No, you can write your systems programs in a GC'd language, and it'll be ok", but there are still applications where this feels wrong, and Go makes some really suspect decisions in the name of simplicity (*). There was an obvious gap in the market.
(*) The trade-off being suspiciously similar to Not Invented Here syndrome, where "here" is Bell Labs in the late '70s, possibly early '80s if you're lucky. Hmmm.
At the same time, this is kinda my area of expertise. My PhD was on statically-allocated functional languages, so it was right up my street. Seeing the problem, and knowing the area, I could have tried something in this space. I didn't.
And you know what? I'm glad I didn't. The result is really good, and I don't think I'd have produced something as nice as Rust. It's pleasantly pragmatic, the lifetime inference rules are simple (certainly compared to the thing I saw in research), and I got the language I wanted without a decade of hard work!
The documentation is pretty good, so I'm learning the language from the site, although the language still appears to be in flux even now - despite learning the language much later than I originally hoped I'd be able to (I first planned to learn it several years ago, but never found the time), I don't regret it too much given how it seems to have changed! I'm not entirely sure the docs are up-to-date.
I don't know whether it's me getting more experience in programming, or just the nature of Rust, but I'm not feeling confident just from reading the docs - I want to understand the idiomatic style of the language and read some good Rust code. I've not done that yet, but I have at least started writing code, rather than just reading the manual in the abstract.
For this, I've done the Advent of Code, admittedly extremely late (which is quite good, as it stops me trying to be competitive. :). Running through a couple of dozen simple algorithmic coding challenges is a great way to learn the feel of a language, and understand the subtleties that docs don't get across. And Rust does have subtleties. It doesn't have the pointless accumulated crufty corner cases that C++ has, but the features combine in ways that take a little while to get used to. So, that's what I've been doing.
My code is now up on https://github.com/simon-frankau/advent_of_code_2018 and I plan to carry on with my learning. I think it's my clear favourite systems language now. Being able to code without the fear of segmentation-faulting stupid mistakes from C and C++, but with the full feel of an effective systems language is great.
Posted 2019-02-10.