I agree that dependencies and package management is a real problem in programming nowadays, but it is not a problem unique to Rust. In fact, I struggle to name a single popular language nowadays that doesn’t have the exact same problems.
It’s not so much “But that’s not how you build stable software.” It’s more like “But that’s not how you build software [at all today].” Modern software is powered by loads of shared packages, that’s just how all modern languages work. This is equally true for Rust and Python.
Rust still has the edge here btw. Rust libraries (crates) are often very high quality with very good documentation. The language again helps here a lot, by providing extensive tooling for automatic documentation generation. Documentation in other languages are is far less helpful or poorly written. This is also again something that helps an AI write better code (just as it helps humans write better code).
The packaging also helps elevate Rust to a high-level language, because you can build easily usable abstractions in packages that can be used in simple programs. All the complexity can be hidden away in a crate and suddenly Rust feels more like Python. I think that’s actually a good thing from package managers.
It’s not so much “But that’s not how you build stable software.” It’s more like “But that’s not how you build software [at all today].” Modern software is powered by loads of shared packages, that’s just how all modern languages work. This is equally true for Rust and Python.
You’re not wrong - all libraries with automated dependency packaging do have this problem. But you’re downplaying the scale by a lot. Javascript dependency graphs are absolutely massive. Python has a decent standard library that reduces the number of shared packages by quite a bit. There are definitely downsides to having a large standard library like Python has, but it does significantly reduce the probability of a supply chain attack compared to Javascript.
I can’t comment on Rust personally, since I don’t have much experience with the ecosystem.
The problem of JavaScript is growing far more than its initial scope. Especially since there wasn’t an official org that took care of JavaScript development (and there were companies that wanted to deliberately sabotage such effort, like… Microsoft), and basically the community took the initiative of providing shared libraries, each one looking at their specific problem but ignoring the whole.
Sure, yes, Rust has lots of quality libraries too. I’m thinking of doing the core in D and the GUI in Rust Slint. Plug-in protocol interface modules can be written in whatever, but Rust has some interesting libraries.
I agree that dependencies and package management is a real problem in programming nowadays, but it is not a problem unique to Rust. In fact, I struggle to name a single popular language nowadays that doesn’t have the exact same problems.
It’s not so much “But that’s not how you build stable software.” It’s more like “But that’s not how you build software [at all today].” Modern software is powered by loads of shared packages, that’s just how all modern languages work. This is equally true for Rust and Python.
Rust still has the edge here btw. Rust libraries (crates) are often very high quality with very good documentation. The language again helps here a lot, by providing extensive tooling for automatic documentation generation. Documentation in other languages are is far less helpful or poorly written. This is also again something that helps an AI write better code (just as it helps humans write better code).
The packaging also helps elevate Rust to a high-level language, because you can build easily usable abstractions in packages that can be used in simple programs. All the complexity can be hidden away in a crate and suddenly Rust feels more like Python. I think that’s actually a good thing from package managers.
You’re not wrong - all libraries with automated dependency packaging do have this problem. But you’re downplaying the scale by a lot. Javascript dependency graphs are absolutely massive. Python has a decent standard library that reduces the number of shared packages by quite a bit. There are definitely downsides to having a large standard library like Python has, but it does significantly reduce the probability of a supply chain attack compared to Javascript.
I can’t comment on Rust personally, since I don’t have much experience with the ecosystem.
The problem of JavaScript is growing far more than its initial scope. Especially since there wasn’t an official org that took care of JavaScript development (and there were companies that wanted to deliberately sabotage such effort, like… Microsoft), and basically the community took the initiative of providing shared libraries, each one looking at their specific problem but ignoring the whole.
Sure, yes, Rust has lots of quality libraries too. I’m thinking of doing the core in D and the GUI in Rust Slint. Plug-in protocol interface modules can be written in whatever, but Rust has some interesting libraries.