Ask HN: Is Rust stable enough for use in Production? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is Rust stable enough for use in Production?

2 pointsdistsysdude2 comments

The motto behind the nightly releases is "Stability Without Stagnation", but is Rust really stable for use in building Production systems?

If yes, why aren't we seeing more Open Source Project being built using Rust as compared to Golang? Is it just because of the development time?

I'm particularly curious about why new Open Source DB's are choosing Golang as opposed to Rust or even C/C++.

YugaByteDB had gone with C++, which IMO is a safe and tested choice. CockroachDB however seem to be investing time working around GC pauses and FFI overhead of Golang.

I would love to hear HN's opinion on this topic, given that there is so much talk about Rust over here(mostly positive).

I've also come to understand through reading HN that : All that Google builds is not Gold.

So I'm skeptical about Golang..

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> If yes, why aren't we seeing more Open Source Project being built using Rust as compared to Golang?

That might be your bubble. I'm seeing a ton of new Rust projects almost every other day here on HN, some of them quite serious.

> CockroachDB however seem to be investing time working around GC pauses and FFI overhead of Golang.

Twitch.TV I heard are struggling with the GC pauses as well. Golang is far from the safe choice in any situation where you need high performance. Its advantages come with some drawbacks.

> I'm particularly curious about why new Open Source DB's are choosing Golang as opposed to Rust or even C/C++.

I spoke with several Golang devs the last several months and the answer is quite prosaic and you might not like it: Go is easy. Rust, Haskell, OCaml are hard. People almost always opt for what allows them instant productivity and never stop to consider if that doesn't mean problems down the road.

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IMO Rust still has stuff to sort out -- I am particularly not fond of the many ways to do the same thing for example, and the compilation speed. Also the async/await thing might need some more polishing still.

But everything I've written in Rust is extremely stable and performant so far and I am sticking with it. The core team has proven themselves extremely capable, many times, and they deserve a vote of confidence.

> is Rust really stable for use in building Production systems?

Of course. Rust code has been shipping in Firefox for years now, and most of FAANG uses Rust in production to some degree. The bigger question is whether Rust has the features you need. Async IO, for example, is still quite new. And some C++-like features like const generics are still in development.

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