whats the actual barrier? installing rust? looking at the instructions this doesnt seem much harder than installing zig or go?
I can think of couple:
- Toolchain size: Nim, Zig ~100MB; Rust >1.5GB
- Compilation Times
- Micro-dependency Culture(Edit: As this seems to trigger some people: I code in Rust. I’m just stating the facts.)
It sounds like maybe you're used to skipping part of the development process required for stable well-tested software. Maybe that works for UIs? Wouldn't want my runtime authors feeling that way.
Developers, on the other hand, seem to need some help running static checkers regularly. Most don't seem to have well exercised CI toolchains doing it for them. Or aren't aware that they should be doing so - like yourself.
Rust makes use of the tight integration between language, compiler, and checker to allow the language to be easier and more thoroughly checked than possible with checkers built for other languages. Many steps performed for compilation are reused. Which is what makes it so fast.
If you think "why can't I skip this?" you have missed the point and are exactly the target developer these checks are for.
I've written a lot of software. Never had a complaint about compile times in any language. The reality of developing with Rust is that after the first build, only changed files are rebuilt, which makes it just as fast to compile as any other language.
If compile times are what concerns you about a language, that tells me you're not very far along in your career. You have a lot more problems to discover which are very much more serious. If you ever encounter the problems Rust solves, you'll grow to appreciate it's solutions.
My largest rust project is still fairly small at around 8k lines across two dozen files. Still, it builds and links in 30 seconds on my workstation which is several years old and not particularly fancy.
I could see this beginning to become an issue around 100k lines of code, but I'd think most people would be looking to split into multiple crates before that just for readability.