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Comment by nicoburns | Hacker News Reader

If you know that a crate exists then you can simply `cargo add foo` and have it download in the background while you get on with writing your script. If you don't know that it exists then you'll have to find it the first time, but you have that problem with python standard library modules too.

Writing scripts with Rust likely will be slower than Python, but I don't really buy that having functionality in crates is part of that.

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If you don't know that it exists then you'll have to find it the first time, but you have that problem with python standard library modules too.

Except that, if its in the standard library, you don't have to choose between multiple implementations. I have written scripts faster than I have chosen dependencies.

If I want to make an HTTP request in Python, which module should I use? There is a built in one (more than one I believe), but the official docs link out to a 3rd party module https://docs.python.org/3/library/http.client.html

I think things are beginning to get a bit surreal. People arguing that Rust is a better scripting language than Python and now with one particular poor example in the Python standard library means the chaos of crates.io is a comparable solution in terms of reducing choice.

Rust is a great C++ alternative. But seriously, the community has cult like marketing.

FWIW, I agree with you that Python is better that Rust for scripting (I was not the OP), but finding a crate in Rust is generally a matter of googling "Rust http client" or "Rust regex" and reading the top result. Not exactly hard, and in my experience something that I end up doing in every single language including Python, because using the standard library directly is often not the correct choice.

And there's the Rust cookbook. I view the cookbook as sort of a recommended extended std.

> But seriously, the community has cult like marketing.

What in your opinion makes one language cult-like vs. another that many people like and recommend to others?

Cults generally have a very negative impact on those who are members vs. the leaders. Usually the members of cults are taken advantage of and are only there to support the people at the top.

The Rust community is very far from anything cult-like.

Cults are usually bad for the leaders too.

Yeah, am a Rust beginner but very proficient in Python, and despite having being warned of Rust community's zealotry, I haven't found interacting with them anything but pleasant.

The documentation is great. Various channels to interact with the community have always been polite and helpful.

Heck, one would think that the author of a leading book on the language popping up everywhere to give helpful answers/clarifications would be seen as welcome and not in-your-face-activism.

I honestly can’t remember ever seeing any zealotry (apart from obvious trolls on reddit) but any thread on rust will have at least one person complain about rust zealots. It’s just a meme at this point.

I have a question about the English language here? Is “anything but pleasant” a positive? Doesn’t it mean anything else (like unpleasant, horrible etc), but pleasant?

there's a negation preceding that.

That is correct.

The original poster was saying that generally cults will be rather unpleasant for most mid<->lower level members, but are pleasant for the people at the top (generally by extracting value from those lower-level members, whether it's labor, money, or sexual favors).

This seems a bit counterintuitive, of course - "if it's unpleasant, why the hell wouldn't they leave?". Usually cults have coercive tools that either make it difficult for someone to leave, or manage to brainwash them into believing they would be more unhappy outside of the cult.

The phrase "anything but X" means the opposite of X (e.g. see [1]). So, "anything but pleasant" means "unpleasant". I think the commenter just used it incorrectly.

[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/anything...

Edit: acomar points out that the "haven't" negates what follows, so interpret what I wrote above as "the phrase on its own means not X".

Sorry about the weird phrasing. I did mean that I have always "found it pleasant" dealing with the Rust community.

I'm appalled at myself for the silly manner in which I phrased that. I guess I intended to say: "I have found it nothing but pleasant", but instead ended up tying myself up in knots.

“But” used as a preposition means “except”, so this says “the community isn't anything other than pleasant”.

Rust might become a C++ alternative, but still has some catchup to do with 40 years of ecosystem maturity and this is the kind of stuff that gets overlooked when pitching newer languages.

For quick scripts, it’s really hard to beat python.

For what Rust offers, it is unreasonably effective as a quick scripting language, with one big caveat: Once you’re accustomed to the language and have significant experience with it.

I’ve built and own CLI tools in Rust, used in production, where the alternative language choice was python, and the experience has been way better than I imagined. I expected to trade a ton of developer productivity for the extra speed and safety, but the reality is that it’s not even an integer multiple. Not even close. Again, my expectations were different, but in reality it’s been really pleasant.

My read of the comments here is that Rust is competitive with Python for some scripting tasks from the perspective of someone who knows both. I’m not sure where you get the “arguing that Rust is a better scripting language than Python” or that there’s a “cult like” phenomenon when people share their experiences.

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