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Comment by blub | Hacker News Reader

What's puzzling is why a language designed for memory safety and low-level control and performance is even being considered for web development where they had the former all along and they generally don't care about the latter. Or if they do they use Java, Go or throw a couple dozen more servers at the problem.

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It's because it also has expressiveness features that Java and Go don't.

* Better handling of "null"-ness

* Sum types

* Stricter/different error-handling

* Move semantics, which can actually be nice for some APIs outside of any performance considerations

Kotlin checks a couple of these boxes, but then is also GC'd, so also gets rid of a lot of "noise" that would be in the equivalent Rust code.

For typical backend junk, I'd be Kotlin first, but I'd definitely consider Rust if performance (non-IO) was a concern.

With all the "Rust is as productive as X" and "If your data structure/logic won't work in rust, it was bad design" bullshit the silent majority of us are accustomed to see on HN..

With Java you only need to throw more RAM at the server. The performance is perfectly acceptable compared to something like Python or Ruby. You can always squeeze out more performance with Rust but the primary benefit is the lack of a GC.

I don't understand your last sentence. What benefits does lack of a GC have other than more performance?

A bit offtopic for HN, but that's a really nice username. (Just looking at that, I can definitely see how you'd find those things puzzling!)

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