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Flattening Rust’s learning curve

(corrode.dev)
451 points birdculture | 2 comments | 13 May 25 22:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.434s | source
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jillesvangurp ◴[14 May 25 06:54 UTC] No.43981625[source]▶
Rust has a few big hurdles for new users:

- it's very different from other languages. That's intentional but also an obstacle.

- it's a very complex language with a very terse syntax that looks like people are typing with their elbows and are hitting random keys. A single character can completely change the meaning of a thing. And it doesn't help that a lot of this syntax deeply nested.

- a lot of its features are hard to understand without deeper understanding of the theory behind them. This adds to the complexity. The type system and the borrowing mechanism are good examples. Unless you are a type system nerd a lot of that is just gobblygook to the average Python or Javascript user. This also makes it a very inappropriate language for people that don't have a master degree in computer science. Which these days is most programmers.

- it has widely used macros that obfuscate a lot of things that further adds to the complexity. If you don't know the macro definitions, it just becomes harder to understand what is going on. All languages with macros suffer from this to some degree.

I think LLMs can help a lot here these days. When I last tried to wrap my head around Rust that wasn't an option yet. I might have another go at it at some time. But it's not a priority for me currently. But llms have definitely lowered the barrier for me to try new stuff. I definitely see the value of a language like users. But it doesn't really solve a problem I have with the languages I do use (kotlin, python, typescript, etc.). I've used most popular languages at some point in my life. Rust is unique in how difficult it is to learn.

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1. devnullbrain ◴[14 May 25 16:08 UTC] No.43986202[source]▶
>it's very different from other languages. That's intentional but also an obstacle.

It's very different from a lot of the languages that people are typically using, but all the big features and syntax came from somewhere else. See:

>The type system and the borrowing mechanism are good examples. Unless you are a type system nerd a lot of that is just gobblygook to the average Python or Javascript user.

Well, yeah, but they generally don't like types at all. You won't have much knowledge to draw on if that's all you've ever done, unless you're learning another language in the same space with the same problems.

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2. syklemil ◴[14 May 25 21:01 UTC] No.43989181[source]▶
Python is growing type annotations at a brisk pace though, and Typescript is cannibalizing Javascript at an incredible speed. Between that and even Java getting ADTs, I suspect the people who whine about "type nerds" are in for some rough years as dynamic languages lose popularity.

And I suspect the people who are familiar with seeing something like `dict[str, int]` can map that onto something like `HashMap<String, i32>` without actually straining their brains, and grow from there.