Can someone please tell me what special about Rust? Say, why aren't desktop application popular based on say Python?
On tangent, ive seen a lot of terminal base application in typescript and go
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Can someone please tell me what special about Rust? Say, why aren't desktop application popular based on say Python?
On tangent, ive seen a lot of terminal base application in typescript and go
I think I've seen this topic pop up from time to time ;)
For me personally, I've been replacing a lot of my Python programs with Rust. A lot of it isn't much harder to write, and things like sum types are sorely missed when I write Python or most non-Rust languages. And usually, if my Rust program is a lot more difficult to write, it's because I'm exploring an optimization that wouldn't be possible or worthwhile in Python. Having an application be native and compiled is a big plus for me. I plan to release a desktop app in Rust but it isn't at that stage yet.
I think the main reason is that writing Rust is a joy that gives you confidence. This is important to me as I often have small amounts of time to work on it (new dad). With rust I can start implementing a small feature, as long as it compiles I can be reasonably sure it works. In Python I’d be wading through a sea of runtime errors and never quite sure I actually got it right.
Cross platform is another good reason. UI library support is good. You have iced like this app, but also decent GTK bindings.
No runtime needed makes distribution and packaging infinitely easier than Python.
It’s a great language for writing desktop apps.
Or you can just build it in Rust and learn what .unwrap() does.
some of the best ways to build gui's on golang might be gtk golang bindings imo. I haven't tried qt but gtk for linux should work.
I have seen many apps also use golang as backend and flutter as frontend (warp android app wormhole or something and localsend both do this)
The answer is that there are several python GUI applications (a dozen music players, Cura, Calibre, Anki, Deluge, etc). Hardly any Go because all bindings suck (which isn't that surprising, go devs are often hostile to cgo) and there's no (non toy) native toolkit either. I'd don't know why that is. Every few years I look for one but I give up and write the UI for my Go tool in html instead...
In my opinion the problem is more that support for more Toolkits isn't built into Python so you essentially need to deal with another language as well, which sucks when you only know python.
Distributing Python for Windows is even harder than for Linux.
Go is kind of verbose and just a bit hostile towards fancy structural features and complex abstractions. I think rust is kind of the opposite of GO in a lot of ways, even though they theoretically should be targeting a lot of the same use-cases.
There's also something akin to the Python Paradox here: https://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html
Rust is an interesting and intellectually stimulating language, it lets you use your brain to write clean and pretty code, and rewards you for making clean powerful abstractions.
Java and Go are both anti-intellectual languages that reward you for turning off your brain and writing the most verbose awful code you can think of, and will leave anyone who has ever studied type-theory with a massive migraine for hours after each coding session (go moreso than java).
I think those two factors, C bindings, and whether they respect the programmer's intelligence, are the main reason.
AWT - still actually under-pining the others, but very ugly to work with
Swing - basically runs on top of AWT, with the same design model, plays badly with it. Is hard to write in a testable way, is prone to embedding business logic in UI components
JavaFX - all the worst parts of business Java with all the worst parts of XML and also the worst parts of a game engine. Now you need to care about 'adding a scene to a stage'.
The principle core technology that made Java good was applets. Since they were killed by mobile, the reason for delivering a Java app is functionally zero. You will need to ship a JVM which you need to update alongside your app.
Java is a great back-end development language and a really poor GUI language.
These days you should either ship an Electron app or native code.