Rust fact vs. fiction: 5 Insights from Google's Rust journey in 2022
Rust fact vs. fiction: 5 Insights from Google's Rust journey in 2022
Wondering about Rust? We're addressing rumors and providing insight gained from years of early adoption of Rust here at Google.
Rust adoption at Google:
over 1,000 Google developers ... have authored and committed Rust code as some part of their work in 2022
The learning curve might not be as steep as often said:
More than 2/3 of respondents are confident in contributing to a Rust codebase within two months or less when learning Rust. Further, a third of respondents become as productive using Rust as other languages in two months or less
I know some rust. I definitely agree that the learning curve from other languages isn't six months high.
I’m starting to try and learn it right now, and it really doesn’t seem that bad. To be fair I’m mostly going through books and documentation to make sure I understand the differences before I jump in. Learning some of the specific features of the language doesn’t seem too bad either
Two thirds being Called confident to work in Rust within two months of learning it doesn't sound like particular fast, tbh.
In our company we're currently transitioning from old-school Java to Google's Dart (plus the Flutter framework), team by team. You get one to three days to set up the environment, reading and doing some codelabs, a course of two days and then you start developing in the decently big Dart codebase the other teams already prepared, starting your daily development business. (A second two-day course follows some weeks later). Well, nobody (systematically) asks if you're feeling confident to contribute in Dart, but it obviously works and I haven't heard any "I can't get my head around this" type of complaints.
Sure, maybe going from Java to Dart isn't that much of a change as going from whatever these 1000 folks at Google came from to Rust, but if one third of the developers does not feel confident to develop in Rust after two months of learning it, this sounds like a lot to me.