Why do developers hate Rust?

Discover the truth behind developers' mixed feelings towards Rust in our latest video. Dive into the complexities of this powerful programming language and uncover the reasons behind the love-hate relationship.

[charles-yzc]

I think Rust's biggest mistake was not calling their objects "Buckets" Then they could appropriately be called "Rust Buckets".

[michaellee]

There are more jobs where you talk about Rust than there are jobs where you program in Rust.

[Designed]

Rust makes it hard to write bad code by making it hard to write code in general

[PeterNeave]

By learning Rust. I've started to think more about error checking and results in my C# code. It is making my programming better overall.

[tobiasvl]

2. Comparing a weakly, dynamically typed language's syntax to a statically typed language is unfair. The latter will always be more verbose.

[nsubugakasozi]

Long compile times in comparison to stuff like golang and typescript is the biggest surprise and cause of the hate. If you are coming from c++ to rust, you expect it...but from those languages to rust, its a shock

[hydroxa]

I think another part of it is certain ecosystem problems. I write in rust for hobbies because I really like the rust environment, but I have so much trouble writing graphical apps or games or anything user facing, because all the graphical stuff in Rust is still in its infancy. It's gotten a lot better with things like Slint, Dioxus, Bevy and the unofficial godot-rust, but these all have bugs or limitations that prevent them from being used for major projects.
I do feel like we're on the right path, but I don't feel like there's a mature enough graphics ecosystem for most app developers to join Rust yet.

[LeviShawando]

I'm a developer with autism. Rust is neat and the safety features are pretty cool but it doesn't satisfy my curiosity like C does. If anything, Rust doesn't even compete with C but complements it.

[bigz]

I've been learning Rust for a few months now (I'm a Ruby developer in my day job). On my hobby project, I fight the compiler a lot. On the other hand, when I'm done fighting with it, my code usually works.

[HalfMonty]

I really really wanted Rust to be my goto general purpose language... While it does have quite a bit of built in little things that let you ignore good practices and write dirty fast prototype code, it doesn't excel at it compared to some other languages. I don't tend to build programs that already exist, which means a good chunk of what I do is prototyping and testing and throwing away code as I come up with better approaches. The trouble I have is that takes longer in Rust. However, once you know exactly what you are doing and you know the thing you are building will live on and be useful for quite a long time, that seems to be when you want to involve Rust as that seems to be where it shines. Unfortunately for me... that's just not where I tend to sit professionally so I barely get a chance to use Rust.

[therustybits]

For non-trivial applications language simplicity is more of a liability than an asset. I'd much rather have the compiler discover problems in my code at build time than have my users find them at runtime.

[frogandspanner]

I have been involved in computing since 1971. My first language was Algol 60, then Fortran, Algol 68, Cobol, Snobol, MIX, PDP-11 assembler. That was my first year at UK University. Since then there has been a new language sprung upon the poor programming masses by the purveyors of novelty.

After so much practice I can learn a new language, but now in my '70s I am getting rather fed up with the quest for novelty. Most programming is not from afresh, but modifying and adapting code that already exists, and if it is in an unfamiliar language it is often a matter of guessing, or cutting and pasting - techniques that meaning-in-white-space languages like make and Python conspire to make this difficult.

I want to spend my time programming, not learning to program.

[CFSworks]

Another point, hinted at but not stated explicitly in the video, is that Rust's borrow checker forces a whole different set of programming patterns than a programmer may like. Yes, this is by design: these patterns are more obviously memory safe (i.e. verifiably safe at compile-time) than their alternatives, and it's generally a good idea to learn them so you can apply them to your favorite non-Rust programming language. But very often, the other patterns are just as memory-safe, possibly even more appropriate under the circumstances, and yet the borrow checker gets overzealous and prevents their use.

[apache__]

at 4:30 you mention that rust is being used in aerospace and automotive applications. This is demonstrably wrong, rust has no formal specification unlike ADA, C, or C++. Because of this it is impossible to get software written in rust approved by FAA and relevant bodies for use in mission critical systems aboard aircraft or car controls. The rest of your points for rust are reasonable, but lying so blatantly; and for such a key point is disappointing.

[hiongun]

You have Zig, a beautiful optimazation between human factors and machine factors.

[BogdanSerban]

The problem with Rust is that they try to reinvent each term. Most of the time you try to rewire your brain to understand that a crate is a library, or what is an arm or a trait.

[MechMK]

One of the biggest issues I have with Rust is that it's virtually impossible to "pick up and explore". A lot of "modern" languages are reasonably straightforward to the point where you need to learn very little syntax and can get started fairly well. For example, if you've never programmed Python in your life and come from Java, then picking up Python will be relatively easy.

But Rust requires you to learn so much before you can do anything, that a lot of developers will just say "screw it" and pick a different language.

[foreignconta]

You forgot one important thing: Rust Cargo crate system! Imagine someone opening a PR with 100s of crates. It will be impossible to review each one of them. The dislike for rust comes from there as some people speculate that cargo is going to be like npm.

[lorensims]

Rust looks to me like Swift done the hard way.

[AreQ]

With 5+ years of experience in BE Web Dev with Java/Kotlin/Scala and currently 2 years with Rust, I would never go back. It's so addictive language. Everything has its place, and once you compile it, you can be sure it will work perfectly. So much so that having 3 micro services written in Rust, working for more than 1 year, none of them had any runtime error.