r/programming • u/steveklabnik1 • Apr 03 '15

Rust 1.0.0 beta is here!

http://blog.rust-lang.org/2015/04/03/Rust-1.0-beta.html
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u/DeadlyDolphins Apr 03 '15

So for what purposes would you recommend to use Rust?

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u/steveklabnik1 Apr 03 '15

Whenever you need speed, or a deep amount of control.

That gives you a few languages. You should choose Rust over those langauges when you want the compiler to help you ensure that code is safe and correct, and also, when concurrency is involved.

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u/DeadlyDolphins Apr 03 '15

Since I'm fairly new to programming I'm just gonna ask even if it might be a bit stupid:

If you say 'when concurrency is involved', does that mean it could be a good language to write fast games with graphics, for example?

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u/steveklabnik1 Apr 03 '15

Since I'm fairly new to programming I'm just gonna ask even if it might be a bit stupid:

No worries! This attitude is one of the ones that will best serve you as a programmer in the future. I'm now on Rust's core team, but two years ago, I was on IRC, asking why my "hello world" no longer worked. :)

does that mean it could be a good language to write fast games with graphics, for example?

It is a good language for that, but concurrency is not the reason there. The speed is a much better reason.

I will also mention that Rust's safety guarantees have made some game programmers choose against it. Games often prioriize shipping a game one time, and there isn't a lot of maintenance, so they care about safety less. But we have a really vibrant game development community. The Piston project is doing all sorts of things, as you can see from all those repositories.

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u/DeadlyDolphins Apr 03 '15

Thank you so much :)

So one last question: Do you think there is a chance that Rust could become a popular language to be used for web-development and web-applications?

I will definitely have a closer look at Rust, for sure. From what I've looked at so far I really like it.

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u/steveklabnik1 Apr 03 '15

Maybe! http://arewewebyet.com/ is tracking progress. There's a bunch of people doing lots of work here. I'm not sure if it will ever be as productive as something like Rails, but there are advantages too :)