Skip Navigation
Rust @programming.dev cybergazer @sh.itjust.works

My frustrations with Rust. Why is this the most loved language?

I'm making this post after endless frustrations with learning Rust and am about to just go back to TypeScript. Looking at Rust from the outside, you'd think it was the greatest thing ever created. Everyone loves this language to a point of being a literal cult and its popularity is skyrocketing. It's the most loved language on Stackoverflow for years on end. Yet I can't stand working in it, it gets in my way all the time for pointless reasons mostly due to bad ergonomics of the language. Below are most of the issues I've encountered:

  • Cargo is doing too many things at once. It's a build system but also a package manager but also manages dependencies? Idk what to even call it.

  • Syntax is very confusing for no reason. You can't just look at rust code and immediately know what it does. Having to pollute your code &, ? and .clone() everywhere to deal with ownership, using :: to refer to static methods instead of a "static" keyword. Rust syntax is badly designed compared to most other languages I used. In a massive codebase with tons of functions and moving parts this is unreadable. Let's take a look at hashmaps vs json

let mut scores = HashMap::new();
scores.insert(String::from("Name"), Joe);
scores.insert(String::from("Age"), 23);

Supposively bad typescript

const person = {
  name: "joe",
  age: 23
}

Js is way more readable. You can just look at it and immediately know what the code is doing even if you've never coded before. That's good design, so why do people love rust and dislike typescript then?

  • Similarly, Async code starts to look really ugly and overengineered in rust.

  • Multiple string types like &str, String, str, instead of just one "str" function

  • i32 i64 i8 f8 f16 f32 instead of a single unified "number" type like in typescript. Even in C you can just write "int" and be done with it so it's not really a "low level" issue.

  • Having to use #[tokio:main] to make the main function async (which should just be inbuilt functionality, btw tokio adds insane bloat to your program) yet you literally can't write code without it. Also what's the point of making the main function async other than 3rd party libraries requiring it?

  • Speaking of bloat, a basic get request in a low level language shouldn't be 32mb, it's around 16kb with C and libcurl, despite the C program being more lines of code. Why is it so bloated? This makes using rust for serious embedded systems unfeasible and C a much better option.

  • With cargo you literally have to compile everything instead of them shipping proper binaries. Why??? This is just a way to fry your cpu and makes larger libraries impossible to write. It should be on the part of the maintainer to build the package beforehand and add the binary. Note that i don't mean dependencies, I mean scripts with cargo install. There is no reason a script shouldn't be compiled beforehand.

Another major issue I've encountered is libraries in Rust, or lack thereof. Every single library in rust is half-baked. Axum doesn't even have a home page and its docs are literally a readme file in cargo, how's that gonna compare to express or dotnet with serious industry backing? If you write an entire codebase in Axum and then the 1 dev maintaining it decides to quit due to no funding then what do you do? No GUI framework is as stable as something like Qt or GTK, literally every rust project has like 1 dev maintaining it in his free time and has "expect breaking changes" in the readme. Nothing is stable or enterprise ready with a serious team with money backing it.

As for "memory safety", it's a buzzword. Just use a garbage collector. They're invulnerable to memory issues unless you write infinite while loop and suitable for 99% of applications.

"But muh performance, garbage collectors are slow!"

Then use C or C++ if you really need performance. Both of them are way better designed than Rust. In most cases though it's just bikeshedding. We're not in 1997 where we have 10mb of ram to work with, 9/10 times you don't need to put yourself through hell to save a few megabyes of a bundle size of a web app. There are apps with billions of users that run fine on php. Also, any program you write should be extensively tested before release, so you'd catch those memory errors if you aren't being lazy and shipping broken software to the public. So literally, what is the point of Rust?

From the outside looking in, Rust is the most overwhelming proof possible to me that programmers are inheritly hobbists who like tinkering rather than actually making real world apps that solve problems. Because it's a hard language, it's complicated and it's got one frivelous thing it can market "memory safety!", and if you master it you're better than everyone else because you learned something hard, and that's enough for the entire programming space to rank it year after year the greatest language while rewriting minimal c programs in rust quadrupling the memory usage of them. And the thing is, that's fine, the issue I have is people lying and saying Rust is a drop in replacement for js and is the single greatest language ever created, like come on it's not. Its syntax and poor 3rd party library support prove that better than I ever can

"Oh but in rust you learn more about computers/low level concepts, you're just not good at coding"

Who cares? Coding is a tool to get shit done and I think devs forget this way too often, like if one works easier than the other why does learning lower level stuff matter? It's useless knowledge unless you specifically go into a field where you need lower level coding. Typescript is easy, rust is not. Typescript is therefore better at making things quick, the resourse usage doesn't matter to 99% of people and the apps look good and function good.

So at this point I'm seeing very little reason to continue. I shouldn't have to fight a programming language, mostly for issues that are caused by lack of financial backing in 3rd party libraries or badly designed syntax and I'm about to just give up and move on, but I'm in the minority here. Apparently everyone loves dealing with hours and hours of debugging basic problems because it makes you a better programmer, or there's some information I'm just missing. Imo tho think rust devs need to understand there's serious value in actually making things with code, the ergonomics/good clean design of the language, and having serious 3rd party support/widespread usage of libraries. When you're running a company you don't have time to mess around with syntax quirks, you need thinks done, stable and out the door and I just don't see that happening with Rust.

If anyone makes a serious comment/counterargument to any of my claims here I will respond to it.

92

You're viewing a single thread.

92 comments

  • I would very much like to address some of these points, since I don't think you are making a good argument here.

    I shall preface this by saying that comparing Rust to TypeScript is a bad idea. They are meant for fundamentally different things and you should not regard Rust as a TypeScript replacement. I will do my best to show why Rust took the paths it did whilst being as brief as possible, but if TypeScript is your measuring stick, you should stick to it.

    First of all, cargo does a lot of stuff. This is true, but you are comparing Rust to TypeScript here, and therefore you should compare cargo to npm, npm is the same thing. It does everything all at once, and everyone loves it. Cargo doing everything it does is meant to be a convenient way to interact with Rust projects. That being said, if you don't like Cargo, you can use rustc directly. You can compile Rust code much the same way you would C/C++, with a Makefile.

    Multiple string types: As compared to TypeScript, this would seem like an unnecessary complication, but let's compare it to C++ for a second. In C++ you have two string types as well, namely const char * and std::string. These are 'basically' the same as &str and String respectively. It comes down to whether or not you want your string to be heap allocated or not. Allocation is not something you get any control over in TypeScript and for that reason it is possible to have a single unified string type. Also, TypeScript hides the internal representation of strings from you, which is convenient, but can be a real pain in the butt if you're trying to do low-level manipulations.

    I would agree that Rust's syntax can be quite terse, but this is due in part to it being a strongly typed language, unlike TypeScript, which is very weakly typed and can therefore simplify a lot of things.

    Async code looks ugly in rust. Yeah, it does. Mostly because it's not doing the same thing that it would be in TypeScript. TypeScript async code and Rust async code are fundamentally different. If you have a look at async code in modern C++ you will see a lot of the same complexity as you do in Rust, since it's more closely related to what Rust does.

    You say that rust has many different integer types, yet in C you can 'just write int and be done with it'. This is patently false. Here is a catalog of Rust integer types and their C/C++ equivalents:

    • i8 -> char
    • u8 -> unsigned char
    • i16 -> short
    • u16 -> unsigned short
    • i32 -> int (This is the only one you would get if you just write int.)
    • u32 -> unsigned int
    • i64 -> long long
    • u64 -> unsigned long long

    In TypeScript you have just number, that's true, but it's a managed language. Again, this hides the complexity from you, but it comes at a steep cost. If you actually want to do low-level manipulations, you have to drop down to something like a Uint32Array type, which is exactly equivalent to [u32] in Rust.

    Having to use #[tokio::main] to make an async main. This makes me think you don't understand how async code works. The reason you can just write async code in TypeScript is because there is a runtime. Your code doesn't just run. You need a browser or a Node.JS server or something similar. That is what tokio is (kind of). This also addresses the bloat argument for tokio. Rust does not have a runtime, and therefore when you want to write async code, you need to add one. In TypeScript land, you just get the runtime whether you want it or not.

    As for GET requests being 32MB, I don't understand what you mean here. The request itself will never be that large. If you are complaining about the binary size, though, you are likely compiling in debug mode. Switch to release mode and add -C opt-level=3 to the compiler flags and you'll get a binary that's way smaller.

    About the libraries, Rust is a young language. Libraries can be hard to find for specific purposes, but that will change over time. Axum doesn't have a home page, btw, because the docs.rs page is more than good enough.

    Memory safety is not a buzzword. In mission-critical software (which you would never write in TypeScript, because it's buggy as all hell), memory safety is something you have to have. If you are using C/C++, your memory safety is 'trust me bro'. 'Just use a garbage collector' is not an argument. When people want memory safety, it's exactly because they don't want a garbage collector. I won't go into the specific details, but you are pigeon-holing Rust in with languages like TypeScript and Java, which are designed for different use-cases. Again, Rust is not a 'better TypeScript' and you should not use it if TypeScript is what you need.

    Also, any program you write should be extensively tested before release, so you’d catch those memory errors if you aren’t being lazy and shipping broken software to the public.

    Not true. Most memory errors that end up being exploited don't cause any bugs and are extremely hard to predict and test for. Rust provides a way for you to write robust software that has some strong guarantees about what the memory of your program looks like. If done correctly, it eliminates the risk that you may have forgotten a scenario in which your program would not be memory safe.

    'Just use C/C++': No. C++, for starters, tends to be much slower than Rust and C is way too low-level to get anything useful done without first having to re-invent the wheel. Rust is a modern language, C and C++ are relics of the past. They are rife with problems and technical debt and the fact that they are designed by committee is the reason for that.

    If you don't see any reason to continue with Rust, then don't. People like Rust for reasons that would not make any sense to you as a TypeScript programmer. Rust is a good programming language, TypeScript is a patch on top of a broken language. TypeScript is meant to be easy to use and is therefore hard to use for anything other than what it was designed to do.

92 comments