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Stop making me memorize the borrow checker

(erikmcclure.com)
177 points signa11 | 1 comments | 16 Nov 24 23:29 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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chrismorgan ◴[17 Nov 24 03:08 UTC] No.42161684[source]▶
> This means, to be a highly productive Rust programmer, you basically have to memorize the borrow checker rules, so you get it right the first time. This is stupid, because the whole point of having a type system or a borrow checker is to tell you when you get it wrong, so you don’t have to memorize how the borrow rules work.

This is completely back to front. Of course you have to internalise the rules of a borrow checker or type system to be highly productive. How can you hope to do a good job without that?

replies(2): >>42161899 #>>42162590 #
1. chombier ◴[17 Nov 24 07:35 UTC] No.42162590[source]▶
> Of course you have to internalise the rules of a borrow checker

This is generally a good thing: the more you internalise the logic of borrow checking, the earlier you start thinking about "who owns what" instead of deferring the choice to later, which often ends up in a tangled mess of "incidental data structures" as it is sometimes called in the c++ world [1].

Of course in c++ this means you have to internalise this discipline the hard way, i.e. without the borrow checker helping you.

[1] https://isocpp.org/blog/2016/05/cppcon-2015-better-code-data...