I'm a little skeptical after first reading "Disclaimer: I'm digging Rust. I lost my hunger for programming from doing too many sad commercial projects. And now it's back. You rock, Rust!" and then seeing comparisons to Python in the text where it seems like the author might prefer writing in Python, especially with all of the Rust cons listed.
Is the author saying Rust is a breath of fresh air from C++ or from all other programming languages? Ruby was my breath of fresh air for a while, but lately I've not been enthusiastic about any language or framework, really, so I curious how great Rust really is these days.
As somebody who comes from the Python community just like the author, I can relate to some of his points:
"In Python I try to avoid even having dependencies if I can, and only use the standard library. I don't want my users to have to deal with virtualenv and pip if they don't have to (especially if they're not pythonistas)"
This rings so true to me. Package management in Rust is much better than in Python.
Also, Rust feels a bit like "pythonic systems programming". I mean that it just feels like the right tool for the job. And it might feel a bit verbose in the beginning, but in reality it's explicit and precise. It feels pretty ergonomic just like Python.
Isn't it fantastic that people start comparing Rust to more high level languages like Python and Ruby instead of C++ or C? It says a lot about the language design and its goals.
Very easy when you're in control of the machine (and are a developer). A while back I had written a tool in Python purely for myself (mistake #1), and relied heavily on dependencies which needed to compile C extensions (mistake #2), and then it turned out to be very useful for others on my team (mistake #3), which consisted of mostly non-developers (mistake #4) using Windows/Mac (mistake #5). I've since left, and while they supposedly have a dev who can help them install the tool, I'm still running it for them on a regular basis because I don't want to be mean and they haven't sorted it out.
Python's dependency management is great for devs who have a GCC toolchain, but it really sucks when you need to share code with non-developers.
> but lately I've not been enthusiastic about any language or framework
That's sad... There are so many languages out there, and not even one seems interesting or fascinating to you? Take a look at my list[1], maybe you'll find something you'd like ;-)
Anyway, Rust and Python are too dissimilar to compare them and decide which is more of a "breath of fresh air". It would be more meaningful to compare Rust with C++ and D. I wish someone did a blog post about it.
Is the author saying Rust is a breath of fresh air from C++ or from all other programming languages? Ruby was my breath of fresh air for a while, but lately I've not been enthusiastic about any language or framework, really, so I curious how great Rust really is these days.