This week, Jonathan Bennett chats with Herbert Wolverson about Rust! Is it really worth the hype? Should you have written that in Rust? What’s up with “if let some” anyways? And what’s the best way to get started with this exciting language? We also cover comparisons with other languages like Ada, what drives us crazy about Cargo, and the fascinating world of kernel development!
— Hands-on Rust: https://pragprog.com/titles/hwrust/hands-on-rust/
— Rust Brain Teasers: https://pragprog.com/titles/hwrustbrain/rust-brain-teasers/
— The Rust Roguelike Tutorial: http://bfnightly.bracketproductions.com/
— Ardan Labs: https://www.ardanlabs.com/
— LibreQos: https://libreqos.io/
Did you know you can watch the live recording of the show right in the Hackaday Discord? Have someone you’d like use to interview? Let us know, or contact the guest and have them contact us!
Direct Download in DRM-free MP3.
If you’d rather read along, here’s the transcript for this week’s episode.
I’ve been using C/C++ for many decades, and Rust is the FIRST language that has come along that I think has a chance of replacing them. Yes, I can’t do things in the the C++ way, but that brings many benefits as well as issues – overall all though I think the decisions made for the language are good (unlike many other languages) and the end result is code that compiles 1) tends to work, 2) runs fast.
The thing that puts me off learning Rust is …the name. To me it conjures up an image of decay. As well as the name of a recent film production where someone famous shot someone else on set with a live round. Yes I know that happened after the language came out. Sound like psychological nonsense? Sure. But there it is.
Try repeating the name until you hit the point of Semantic satiation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_satiation
Rust is named after a fungus that is robust, distributed, and parallel.
A bit like how “ISIS Wallet” ended up being a problematic name a couple months after it went live.
https://www.cnbc.com/2014/09/03/isis-wallet-rebrands-to-softcard-to-avoid-confusion-with-militants.html