I am NOT making a Rust replacement, but — if you could fix one* thing about Rust syntax/semantics/etc.
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@cyberia @simon @yosh @poliorcetics Right, I don't mean that as like an insult saying you're incapable of imagining things outside of the tools you're currently allowed to use. I'm just saying that I've caught myself coming up with excuses for the limitations of the language I use because I know those limitations are not going to be lifted... and therefore, it's easier to imagine that they make sense than to imagine that I'm suffering for no good reason is the long version of what I was trying to say.
@fasterthanlime @simon @yosh @poliorcetics Sure - but this is a pattern I use in TypeScript as well which allows anonymous structs as function returns. In this case the restriction in Rust made me a better TS engineer, so it goes both ways. I would definitely agree with you in other contexts (like passing structs as parameters in C being messy meaning that people think it's an undesirable thing in general)
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I think I may have accidentally come up with a drinking game
If someone mentions function coloring, you have to finish your glass
@fasterthanlime
Do I have to finish sync or async? -
@fasterthanlime When I borrow `self` mutably, it ends up locking down the entire self from immutable borrows, but really I just want certain fields to be locked down. Some fields will never be mutably borrowed and so I should allow immutable borrows to self that only access those fields. Basically in the direction of field projection.
@chosunone @fasterthanlime I think this just comes down to making the borrow checker (static analysis) more intelligent so that you can have more granular *borrows*, right?
Actually marking the fields as mutable or immutable doesn’t make much sense to me either, so I guess you’re suggesting either new syntax when borrowing or else a smarter borrow checker?
(It’s a tension point to be sure but I don’t hit it very often)
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Unfortunately the ecosystem is split between colored functions and coloured functions
@fasterthanlime I frequently write both and TBH this isn’t even in my top 10 complaints
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@yanns they use `_` for that? huh! been a while since my EPFL days
@fasterthanlime they used '_' for a lot of things, too much actually, bringing confusion. In Scala 3, they tried to reduce this, for example by using '*' for imports.
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I am NOT making a Rust replacement, but — if you could fix one* thing about Rust syntax/semantics/etc. what would you fix?
(*one per reply, multiple replies per household are allowed)
@fasterthanlime The `Index` trait would be able to returned owned smart pointers.
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I am NOT making a Rust replacement, but — if you could fix one* thing about Rust syntax/semantics/etc. what would you fix?
(*one per reply, multiple replies per household are allowed)
@fasterthanlime well my number one was fixed literally in my birthday in 1.88 with if let chaining. And that was a complaint from the first day I started writing Rust about 8 years ago
These days my biggest complaints are probably
1. The relatively clunky syntax for nested lookups in deeply optional trees like JSON structures.
2. The lack of a Swift style defer block. This can be emulated with scope/drop guards but a proper keyword would be so much nicer. -
I am NOT making a Rust replacement, but — if you could fix one* thing about Rust syntax/semantics/etc. what would you fix?
(*one per reply, multiple replies per household are allowed)
@fasterthanlime List<T>, Collection<T>, Map<K, V> (https://github.com/bbqsrc/collections) -- and also that concrete methods override trait methods, not the other way around (related to the above, was a shitshow implementing this.)
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@fasterthanlime The syntax for traits: in my head, "I am writing a struct implementing this trait", not "this trait is also implemented by my struct".
@latenightowl @fasterthanlime Agreed.
Though even if one stayed with the existing approach
> trait SomeTrait for Type
would be better than the
> impl SomeTrait for Type
Rust today uses.
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Unfortunately the ecosystem is split between colored functions and coloured functions
This would honestly make a decent Twitch stream
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@arichtman @pndc yeah exactly the fix is unsoundness so..
@fasterthanlime @arichtman @pndc invent a concept of restricted or external traits and go insane at the consequences
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@lutzky @fasterthanlime I would very much like a garbage-collected language that shares the Rust standard library and has first-class interop with Rust libraries.
I have no idea if it’s possible though.
@samir @lutzky @fasterthanlime I have done experimental crimes in the past on this, and to a large extent this is possible.
The problem is of course the infinite number of edge cases and the fact that, in practice, you'd need to use the C ABI to have nice things. And the C ABI is the antithesis of nice things.
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I am NOT making a Rust replacement, but — if you could fix one* thing about Rust syntax/semantics/etc. what would you fix?
(*one per reply, multiple replies per household are allowed)
The ability to be generic over const/mut references - I very often find myself writing get and get_mut methods for the same things. You can hack together a version of this with GATs but it really deserves dedicated syntax, or better yet a single system to abstract over mut-ness, async-ness and const-ness.
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@zwol @fasterthanlime That one is also on my list!
Do you have your list somewhere?
My list (syntax-only) is https://soc.me/languages/design-mistakes-in-rust.@soc @fasterthanlime I've never written the whole thing down, no.
Looking at your list, I would also have proposed [] instead of <> for generics, and smushing :: into . by whatever means necessary. I'm indifferent to = instead of : for key/value pair literals. Many of the other things feel uncomfortable as a knee jerk reaction but maybe I could get used to them. I think you're wrong about what macros get used for.
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@soc @fasterthanlime I've never written the whole thing down, no.
Looking at your list, I would also have proposed [] instead of <> for generics, and smushing :: into . by whatever means necessary. I'm indifferent to = instead of : for key/value pair literals. Many of the other things feel uncomfortable as a knee jerk reaction but maybe I could get used to them. I think you're wrong about what macros get used for.
Here's a few more things on my list but not yours:
The dereference operator (unary *) should be postfix. C got this wrong in 1970 and we've been paying for it ever since.
&& and || should have equal precedence and be non-associative wrt each other — this mandates what everyone actually does in practice, writing explicit parens whenever they are mixed.
#[path = "boo.rs"] mod foo; should be spelt mod foo = "boo.rs"; and it should be required for all out-of-line modules.
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@fasterthanlime support a "slow but correct" mode. Rust's tradeoff is "fight the compiler hard, but resulting code is fast and correct". I'd like an option for "less compiler fighting, slower is OK, less correct is not OK". Something like "implicitly wrap all my shit with garbage collection". I'd like Go-level performance with rust-level correctness.
@fasterthanlime bonus points if it's reversible. That is, I'd like to stick #[!author_is_lazy_just_gc_everything] on the top, and:
1. Write new code like the lazy bastard I am
2. Be able to go "oh shit, ot does need to be fast" later, remove it, receive the justice of compiler errors
3. Decide "this fast code needs maintenance but I am lazy" - stick the #[!thing] on top on preexisting, correct rust code, and only then add stuff. -
Here's a few more things on my list but not yours:
The dereference operator (unary *) should be postfix. C got this wrong in 1970 and we've been paying for it ever since.
&& and || should have equal precedence and be non-associative wrt each other — this mandates what everyone actually does in practice, writing explicit parens whenever they are mixed.
#[path = "boo.rs"] mod foo; should be spelt mod foo = "boo.rs"; and it should be required for all out-of-line modules.
@zwol @fasterthanlime Oh, I agree on that!
I have put that in a non-Rust-specific article here:
https://soc.me/languages/unary-operators-are-unnecessary -
I am NOT making a Rust replacement, but — if you could fix one* thing about Rust syntax/semantics/etc. what would you fix?
(*one per reply, multiple replies per household are allowed)
@fasterthanlime I'd fix whatever language/compiler defects cause async streams to be SO BAD to create.
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@zwol @fasterthanlime Oh, I agree on that!
I have put that in a non-Rust-specific article here:
https://soc.me/languages/unary-operators-are-unnecessary@soc @fasterthanlime I cannot agree with dropping prefix unary negation operators. Too much of a divergence from math notation.
And I think dereference does need an operator, not a method, I just think it belongs on the right. I'm not sure about enreference (unary &); it feels natural to put it on the left but maybe that's 40 years of C talking.
Rust has a thing where sometimes you have to write &*(expr) or *&(expr) and all of *those* cases should be intrinsic methods, yeah.
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I am NOT making a Rust replacement, but — if you could fix one* thing about Rust syntax/semantics/etc. what would you fix?
(*one per reply, multiple replies per household are allowed)
@fasterthanlime Linear types (I believe that term is correct; the term is sometimes used for Rust's existing model, but that's more properly "affine").
So you could define a type that instead of having a destructor, is required to be passed to a function consuming it instead of allowing it to fall out of scope.
