this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2025
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310
Rust is Eating JavaScript (leerob.com)
submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

I'd say Rust is definitely mainstream. Obviously not the level of JS or Python, but it's being used all over the place. All FAANG companies, the Linux kernel, JS runtimes, web browsers, Android, Signal, Mullvad...

IMO GC has nothing to do with high or low level. It's just incidental that there's a correlation. In GC you usually don't need to think about manually allocating or deallocating memory or truly understand what pointers are (in some ways anyway). In C / C++ you do.

In Rust you almost never manually allocate or deallocate, and you have both very high and low level APIs.

I'd say Rust is both high and low level. It just depends what you use it for. If you want to build a CLI or a web server, it's great for that. If you want to do kernel stuff and choose to flip bits around you can do that too.

As for books, maybe you'd like trying Rustlings instead.

[–] Hexarei 2 points 4 days ago

rust is both high and low level

I like to describe this as "low level language with high level ergonomics"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Thanks, Rustlings doesn't sound like what I want either. I was hoping for a counterpart of Stroustrup's C++ Reference Manual, or Riehle's "Ada Distilled" or even K&R's book on C. Something that systematically describes the language rather than distractions like the toolchain, mini projects, cutesey analogies, etc. I'm being too persnickity though, mostly because it hasn't been important to me so far.

[–] Hexarei 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Sounds like you want the Rust Book: https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/

Edit: Just realized you said you didn't like it sorry

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I'll probably have to read through it or maybe the Ferrocene standard, but for now, Comprehensive Rust is pretty good. I've been busy today but hope to finish it soon. Is it really true as someone mentioned that Rust binaries are always statically linked? That has its attractions but I would hope it's controllable. Can you use the regular linker (ld) with it?

[–] Hexarei 2 points 4 days ago

Rust libraries are statically linked by default yes, except for a couple of rather low level ones (glibc and a couple others I think) - Honestly though I'd be surprised if you come across a situation where it's something necessary to think about in practice