exa was the first utility program to segfault on me in over a decade. Brought me a useful dose of realism about the maturity of these projects, so I'm much more measured and careful about adopting them now.
For what it's worth, I'm using several Rust tools replacing classic UNIX programs for at least 3 years now and they never crashed.
Beware of [HN] bias. People are very quick to rain on Rust for reasons none of them have ever explained substantively and with facts, and many others are quick to agree without checking.
> Beware of [HN] bias. People are very quick to rain on Rust for reasons none of them have ever explained substantively and with facts, and many others are quick to agree without checking.
I'm not sure what this paragraph is doing in this context. I was specifically talking about my own experience. I see far more praise for Rust compared to negative comments in any case, and was biased towards assuming "Rust rewrites of tools may lack features (due to being newer) or be less portable or whatever else, but the one thing they'll have is stability and reliability". That came crashing down when exa crashed and core dumped.
It didn't turn me into some anti-Rust fanatic either (which people seem to interpret any criticism of Rust-related things as), it just made me realize that in the end it's still up to the individual tool and programmer, and I shouldn't make strong assumptions based on the language a tool is written in.
> I'm not sure what this paragraph is doing in this context. I was specifically talking about my own experience.
Just a small precautionary statement. I've observed it enough times to get very wary of it.
> I see far more praise for Rust compared to negative comments in any case, and was biased towards assuming "Rust rewrites of tools may lack features (due to being newer) or be less portable or whatever else, but the one thing they'll have is stability and reliability".
Filter bubbles in a nutshell, I usually see mostly negative ones and barely see any praise (though I'd define "praise" here as "fan-boying", and NOT as "recognizing the strong sides"; the latter is quite normal and should not be called praising).
> That came crashing down when exa crashed and core dumped.
That's the part I find a bit overly dramatic, this was likely Rust's `panic` mechanism so they likely just didn't handle an expectation / assertion in the code? I had several Rust services in production for years and former colleagues have contacted me to tell me the thing hasn't crashed even once and was only ever restarted for upgrades.
> It didn't turn me into some anti-Rust fanatic either (which people seem to interpret any criticism of Rust-related things as), it just made me realize that in the end it's still up to the individual tool and programmer, and I shouldn't make strong assumptions based on the language a tool is written in.
Yes, fair. If you pepper your Rust code with `.expect()` and `.unwrap()`, the program ending abruptly is expected because the team hasn't taken precautions to handle all possible errors.
Wow. Assuming that is true/not due to a misunderstanding, that really brings a dose of reality to the "Rust is safe!" selling point. Doesn't matter if the language is technically safe, if in real world use it still segfaults (even if due to programmer misuse).
