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Unexpected productivity boost of Rust

(lubeno.dev)
517 points bkolobara | 4 comments | 27 Aug 25 15:48 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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BinaryIgor ◴[27 Aug 25 17:30 UTC] No.45042483[source]▶
Don't most of the benefits just come down to using a statically typed and thus compiled language? Be it Java, Go or C++; TypeScript is trickier, because it compiles to JavaScript and inherits some issues, but it's still fine.

I know that Rust provides some additional compile-time checks because of its stricter type system, but it doesn't come for free - it's harder to learn and arguably to read

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1. rendaw ◴[28 Aug 25 05:16 UTC] No.45048640[source]▶
Not all static type systems are equally expressive/safe/consistent - Java falls back to `Object` and runtime casts frequently, Go doesn't have enums, and C++ variants come with significant footguns and ergonomics issues since they were hacked on and aren't first class language features (i.e. safe access requires using `try/except` which is exclusive with other control structures).
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2. gf000 ◴[28 Aug 25 15:37 UTC] No.45053541[source]▶
> Java falls back to `Object` and runtime casts frequently

Is it frequently? Generics are definitely not as nice as they could be, but they are surprisingly "sufficient" for almost any library, e.g. a full on type-safe SQL DSL like JOOQ. Unsafe casts are very rare, and where you do need Object and stuff are very dynamic stuff where it's impossible to extend compile-time guarantees even theoretically (e.g. runtime code generation, dynamic code loading, etc - people often forget about these use cases, not everything can work in a closed universe)

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3. lukaseder ◴[30 Aug 25 17:51 UTC] No.45076626[source]▶
jOOQ's internals are full of unsafe casts, though.
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4. gf000 ◴[31 Aug 25 10:09 UTC] No.45081980{3}[source]▶
Well, you have basically implemented a Java type-system level type checker for SQL. I don't believe there is any type system strong enough to express the whole thing without the escape hatches (casts), besides Lean, Coq and alia.