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Comment by zephyrthenoble | Hacker News Reader

I am a CS student who had to use Rust for my OS class. I have had several issues using Rust so far, mostly caused by a lack of verbose documentation and examples. The basic ideas are great, but it's hard to learn about some things, such as lifetimes, because it isn't covered in extensive detail in the official documentation, and not at all elsewhere. The compiler is no help, because the errors aren't online.

I won't be using Rust again until well after its 1.0 release. I don't want to struggle with a language, I want to program in it. Rust just seems like it requires a much deeper knowledge of programming theory in general for one to use it effectively, and people like me would rather just write it in Python.

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That seems odd for a student. Let me explain what I mean.

As a student myself (formerly in CS, now Software Development), I believe that getting into a new language with a nice community, such as Rust, seems like a very good way to learn from the design mistakes that the implementors do along the way, unlike with a language like C where not much is changing.

It may also be a good place to contribute, especially since docs, tutorials and simple yet useful libraries might not yet be very present even though they are needed.

Finally, you state the the compiler is no help because the errors aren't online. I agree that this is a valid point. However, I would just ask on Stackoverflow or on the #rust IRC and then contribute the answers you get back to Stackoverflow for others to see.

You have valid points, especially about contributing back to the community. However, I was using Rust to learn how a webserver or a kernel worked, not to learn how a language worked.

If I was writing my own code for my own use, and it didn't effect a grade or was part of important work, then using Rust and learning from/contributing to the community would be a great experience.

The bigger issue is that your course professor picked a language that's still pretty new and under development. To quote the Rust website "Rust is a work-in-progress and may do anything it likes up to and including eating your laundry".

> Rust just seems like it requires a much deeper knowledge of programming theory in general for one to use it effectively

I mean it's on the lower end of language spectrum so yes, it requires more knowledge than say Python but it's not much more than say C.

> people like me would rather just write it in Python

Rust is not supposed to replace Python, it's supposed to replace C/C++/Ada.

I think what I should have said is that, since I had deadlines for project submissions, dealing with Rust in its current state was more difficult than writing it in Python would have been.

I do understand that Rust is trying to become a better alternative to current lower-level languages, but my OS class is (supposed) to be about how things like kernels and schedulers work, not about college students struggling with a new under development language. So by "rather just write it in Python" I meant "rather just write it in something I already can use efficiently." I am obviously not who Rust is aimed at.

You can't write an OS in Python.

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