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boitigayesterday at 11:31 AM7 repliesview on HN

Honestly Rust is an UGLY language. For whatever powers it possesses in memory safety, its cryptic symbology is reminiscent of assembly.

This is a problem when language designers are mathematicians and don’t understand typographical nuance and visual weights.


Replies

dmmtoday at 2:42 PM

What aspects of Rust do you find ugly? Can you provide three examples?

embedding-shapeyesterday at 11:33 AM

If I was forced to write it myself, then I'd agree, I'd use Clojure all day before Rust, because it's such a chore to write, edit and read.

The whole "with AI" kind of reduces my hate for Rust though, and increases the appreciation for how strict the language is, especially when the agents themselves does the whole "do change > see error/warning > adjust code > re-check > repeat" loop themselves, which seems to work better the more strict the language is, as far as I can tell.

The "helpful" error messages from Rust can be a bit deceiving though, as the agents first instinct seems to be to always try what the error message recommends, but sometimes the error is just a symptom of a deeper issue, not the actual root issue.

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stymaaryesterday at 1:31 PM

I really don't get the complain about Rust's syntax, it's almost identical to TypeScript's and nobody complains about TypeScript Synthax being ugly …

(Yes, I know the 'a lifetimes are a bit weird, and that's not something that exist in typescript, but that's also not something you use everyday in Rust either.

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_verandaguyyesterday at 3:21 PM

Why would the language being typographically ugly matter? Python's pretty, but it hides a lot of functional nuance behind that. Rust is terse, but it's also expressive in its terseness.

If you want to give it a fair shot, it does take some time to get used to, coming from something like Python or Ruby. I won't deny that. I've found that using LSP-assissted semantic syntax highlighting helps, for me, on the typographic front.

I don't think typographic design is a key consideration in most languages' designs, though, and I don't think it should be. The main thing I look for is consistent, relatively predictable rules around the syntax, as far as that layer of language choice goes.

pjmlptoday at 6:09 AM

I would rather have people running for languages like D, but the automatic resource management stigma is high among certain classes of developers.

peter-m80yesterday at 12:23 PM

To me it looks clean and concise

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sureglymopyesterday at 9:55 PM

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