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Embedded Rust in Production?

(blog.lohr.dev)
205 points michidk | 8 comments | 14 Oct 24 06:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.824s | source | bottom
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dazzawazza ◴[14 Oct 24 07:56 UTC] No.41835253[source]▶
Access to competant Rust developers can be a challenge even for large companies.

I recently finished a contract at a (very large game dev) company where some tools were written in Rust. The tools were a re-write of python scripts and added no new functionality but were slightly faster in Rust.

The reality was that these tools were unmaintainable by the rest of the company. Only the author "knew" Rust and it was hard to justify a new hire Rust developer to maintain this small set of tools.

The only reason these tools were written in Rust was because the dev wanted to learn Rust (a big but common mistake). I pointed out to the Technical Director that this was a big mistake and the teams had taken on a large amount of technical debt for no reason other than the ego of the wanna-be-rust-developer. Since I "knew" Rust he wanted me to maintain it. My advice was to go back to the Python scripts and I left.

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1. steelegbr ◴[14 Oct 24 08:30 UTC] No.41835460[source]▶
Indeed. The few times I've encountered Rust in the wild it's been for a project that didn't need it (web or IO bound applications) and someone's "My First Rust Project". It's difficult or even at times beyond the budget of smaller organisations to then hire a seasoned Rust dev to unpick whatever mess you got in to.

Don't get me wrong, Rust has a niche where it's the right choice. But being a popular language of the day, it's getting used a lot in the wrong places.

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2. 6r17 ◴[14 Oct 24 08:58 UTC] No.41835616[source]▶
Project that does not need rust "Web, or IO" -> What would you actually choose to make an API then ? Python ? Ruby ? Did you compare benchmarks from rust server to python servers ? Did you actually feel the difference ?
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3. wmil ◴[14 Oct 24 09:44 UTC] No.41835884[source]▶
Most web servers aren't doing anything computationally complex and there's a lot of tech to help you scale to multiple servers, so single server performance usually isn't really critical.

Web stuff is about developer speed. So familiarity, libraries, and tooling. There are plenty of good options.

Anything that needs to be performant can go in it's own service.

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4. smolder ◴[14 Oct 24 13:16 UTC] No.41837249{3}[source]▶
I will say that a rust service, even when doing relatively simple stuff, can scale well in the cloud due to small memory footprint, fast startup time when auto-scaling in containers, and no need for a JIT to "warm up" before it has high throughout and consistent low latency. Building something with these qualities on a framework like Rocket is pretty straightforward, IME.
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5. hu3 ◴[14 Oct 24 13:22 UTC] No.41837313[source]▶
> What would you actually choose to make an API then ? Python ? Ruby ?

Python, Ruby, Go, PHP, C#, Java, TypeScript, Elixir.

Performance benchmarks when writing APIs as 1st concern? Really? 99% of the cases this should be the last criteria.

Monthly reminder that a good part of instagram still runs on Django/Python.

6. 6r17 ◴[14 Oct 24 14:26 UTC] No.41837851{4}[source]▶
Building a web app with rocket is like using a fine BMW to go on highway. It just feels right- I love Guards and what not he added in his framework ; absolutely refreshing work !
7. 6r17 ◴[14 Oct 24 14:27 UTC] No.41837858{3}[source]▶
Have you heard of something called climate change ?
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8. 01HNNWZ0MV43FF ◴[15 Oct 24 01:44 UTC] No.41844120{4}[source]▶
I agree in principle, but it's not something for individual charity to solve. The cost of pollution should be factored into energy prices with a tax.

Then everyone will know, numerically, whether Python is worth it. Maybe it is!