I really want to love Rust, and while I understand the Rust borrow checker in theory, actually using it in practice has been a major headache. I tried Rust on a simple terminal-based project, and after a week of feeling that I was getting nowhere I switched to Go and had a proof of concept in several hours.
With that said, can you recommend a good source to really understand best practices and patterns for ownership and borrowing? I feel that's the biggest hurdle to using Rust (at least in my case).
Alas, I think a week is too short to give Rust. Go will get you more pay-off in the short term, but as you internalise the rules of Rust you'll really start to reap the benefits. Unfortunately being an experienced user, I'm not aware of a single online source for learning this stuff - I mainly teach people directly in person or on IRC.
Agreed. It took me about two months to really understand Rust, and I was coming from a background of languages like C++ and Scala. It pays off, though, for what I want to do with computers.
The rise of "it demos well so we should use it" is in a lot of ways troubling. The inflection point for productivity doesn't need to be "five minutes in" to be worthwhile if you're doing something that is, itself, worthwhile.
> Unfortunately being an experienced user, I'm not aware of a single online source for learning this stuff - I mainly teach people directly in person or on IRC.
Mind sharing the source code? I can whip out a Rust version in the same amount of time. I have been using Rust for two years. I never worry about the borrow checker as it never gives me problems.
With that said, can you recommend a good source to really understand best practices and patterns for ownership and borrowing? I feel that's the biggest hurdle to using Rust (at least in my case).