Technology

I think once you get into rust you just have a hard time going back, and it doesn't feel "hard" anymore. I can practically rust as easily as I can python for scripting and for API servers.

Rust really only gets hard when doing library development IMO. That's when you need lifetimes and well chosen types. But that's also why Rust libraries are superb.

1. Rust is the best language for writing WASM in, so you can write Rust and run it in the browser without transpiling to JS.
2. Rust isn't just about speed or GC pauses. Its type system is amazing and allows you to encode things that you cannot in any other mainstream language.
3. It's so incredibly well designed, it fewla like that clip from Ricky and Morty where Morty feels what standing on a truly even plane feels like then has a panic attack when he leaves. Rust rethought everything from scratch, and isn't just some new syntax or fancy compiler tricks. No null, no exceptions, no inheritance, new typing capabilities, etc.

Go made some pretty poor design choices, and now even Google is choosing Rust for a lot of stuff instead.

I usually pick Rust for CLI tools because:

1. It's statically compiled and isn't dependent on system binaries and won't break if there if the system has the wrong version like C/C++, allowing you to distribute it as a single binary without any other installation steps
2. Still produces fairly small binaries unlike languages like Java or C# (because of the VM)
3. Is a modern language with a good build system (It's like night and day compared to CMake)
4. And I just like how the language works (errors as values etc.)

The JS tooling universe has always seemed like a Lovecraftian hellscape to me.

That's most of any programming of today for me.

If it can't be grasped in a couple of days - then na-ah.

I can patch something I need working which doesn't, written in C.

autotools ftw

Maybe give it a try; it's my favorite language to write programs in now, it has an extremely good standard library, and for everything else there's a mass of high quality crates, its build system is actually competent and makes compiling on Windows or Linux trivial, plus many, many more quality of life features.

Has Golang fizzled? It has struck me as too primitive, but basically on the right track.

My biggest issue with Golang by far is the close tie to Google. They are not our friendly innovator, time and time again they make decisions that will help them earn more ad money, and nothing else. And they have a lobg history of releasing something and then never fix the issues with it, and then more or less abandon it.

Other than that there are afaik some other issues with go, I'm not an expert but from what I hear the GC is quite aggressive and you can't tell it to run when you want. Doing something time sensitive? Well, bad luck. GC time!

I think there's room for a rust-lite language that is GCed. Something with a functional-style type system and that compiles to machine code.

Roc is a candidate for this language. Basically Elm that compiles to machine code, but with a number of tweaks to make it work for more than just a web front end. Like Elm, the type system is haskell like, but simplified.

Go is fine, but it has its flaws. I prefer Rust because:

• memory safety is a compiler check, not a runtime check, so you catch issues earlier
• locks contain their values, so you can't accidentally do anything unsafe
• no nil (() is semantically different), so no surprises with contracts
• everything is an expression, which lends itself really well to FP concepts
• actual dependency management at 1.0
• pretty much no runtime, so calling from another language is super easy
• targets WASM and microcontrollers
• no pointers (not exactly true)

It takes longer to learn, but I'm about as productive with both now.

Eh, it's not that lightweight, Lua is much better for that.

with wasm and friendly new web frameworks, the only thing keeping js alive is inertia

Everything eventually becomes a crab.

The BE, yes, the FE is JS.

Sort of, browsers can run rust code through webassembly. But i dont think this is a full replacement for JavaScript as of yet.

No, Groovy is JVM, not JavaScript.