In Memory Safety We Rust

May 2022

Sorry I've been gone for so long. Life is currently... different. Not bad, just different. Nonetheless, the adventure continues! Let's get into it.

For a long time now, I've been working in Python. It's been really nice to use, it's extremely easy to translate not only my ideas, but also university topics, into runnable code. However, I don't want to work almost exclusively with Python forever, and furthermore I don't want to be pigeonholed into working with Python for the rest of my career. In addition, I didn't start in Python anyway (I actually started with Javascript in middle school somehow). My reasons for this are pretty simple:

  1. I want more fine-grain control over things
  2. I want to make efficient applications for both the desktop and web
  3. I'm bored! I want to have some fun again!

Really, Python is great and will always have a place in my stack, but it actually does too much for me. As much as I know it'll annoy future me, I want to make some of the secret sauce myself.

The next logical question then, is what will I move to? Considering I've wanted to make a serious move towards the more "serious" languages, I initialy thought about either C++ or C#. Two problems there though: I kind of hate C++ (although I can change) and I use a Macbook personally and a Ubuntu machine for work. As far as I'm aware, those don't really jive with C# (ya dig?[1]). I then considered TypeScript (which i am still open to!), but ultimately decided that I really didn't feel like dealing with that right now. I also looked at Zig (which is cool) and Lua (even cooler), but I couldn't find that staying power.

The one language that did pull me in though, was Rust. I'd heard all the ravings from developers about it, I'd seen the StackOverflow annual developer survey results. So I decided to check it out, and let me tell you, this thing is great. It'll kick you in the balls while you're writing it, but you can feel pretty solidly sure that it'll run well, once all is done. The language and ecosystem's paradigms feel well designed. At first they slightly annoy you because you have to think slightly differently than how you normally do, but once you get into it it's amazing.

I decided a little while ago to convert my previous little Python hangman drinking game to Rust, for reasons which I will expound on later (my next project).

I'm gonna go smoke a spliff now, see y'all next time.

- Jordan Streete