On: Why Rust in Production?

[foobarian]

The survey toward the bottom was interesting; ownership and lifetimes showing up as the hardest things to learn for new users. And those are exactly the things that GC solves, or that were historically been involved in majority of security vulnerabilities.

[topspin → foobarian]

The actual data toward the top was also interesting; the cost of GC is high and Rust eliminates it.

[kaba0 → topspin]

The cost of GC is only high as in the cost of living in modern society is. Sure, you can technically live in the forest and build/hunt/harvest everything for yourself, but unless you have very specific reasons for that, having a house and going to the supermarket is the sane default option.

[foobarian → topspin]

Easy to learn, safe, fast: pick two

[troupo → topspin]

That also depends on GC, and the language, and the implementations of the GC.

E.g. in Erlang GC is mostly negligible [1] (but you can put undue pressure on it, and on the underlying OS), there are realtime GCs for Java, etc.

But yeah the cost of GC is never zero.

[1] citation needed

[topspin → troupo]

> That also depends on GC, and the language, and the implementations of the GC.

Nothing depends on no GC.

I'm not anti-GC. I earn most of my living using GC languages. But there comes a time when the cost of power and hardware outweigh the value of GC. When that time comes Rust is an excellent way to solve it. I am, however, very "anti" the "no such time exists" position. That has never been and will never be true.