I recently pivoted to Rust for the backend development, after getting tired of the nodejs ecosystem fragmentation and how fragile things feel. Bun seems very interesting since it allows you to do so many things without pulling in 3rd party libraries and bundlers? Is anybody using it instead of nodejs? how's the experience so far? I might have to give it a try.
Yes, I know there's probably better options than Rust for building APIs, but I wanted to learn it, so why not?
The most appealing thing of Go to me is the good batteries including tooling. I don't use it much outside of little personal projects where I really don't want to deal with dependencies and want a small binary.
Yeah, I prefer Rust as a language but the ecosystem and toolchain is risky. E.g. build time scripts from upstream is too risky these days and it’s commonly used.
This has been my choice for a while too, especially when I found out that you can embed a full-ass webapp in a single executable.
Backend + web API + the actual web pages all contained in a single file. If you have sane defaults, deploying is literally just copying a single executable over.
I'm using it, though I'm leery of how the project is run. It's been great, to be honest. I have been able to build very low-dependency projects quite quickly. Bun's documentation is decent, and its underlying features are performant.
I use it heavily for personal use and find it works very well and lets me ship small applications quickly. I still use rust and other languages too as appropriate.
While the server side is still growing and obviously not as huge as Java etc., Dart definitely is being used on the backend. For instance, https://pub.dev/ itself is written in Dart: https://github.com/dart-lang/pub-dev . :)
The language, like any other, does have some weaker parts, but in general is _very_ nice to write in - thanks to both the language itself and the toolchain built around it.
The apps compile to native binaries for production and are run in Dart VM during development. The SDK is multi purpose. You can write "scripts", you can write CLI apps, servers and with Flutter - the rest of them.
For production you may consider using dart VM also since it benefits from AOT and can actually be faster than a binary after it gets hot, similar to Java.
I have user Dart for small personal projects and it's a great language. Somewhat similar to Kotlin, but IMO a bit nicer. Unfortunately the ecosystem is not as developed outside of Flutter as with more popular languages, but it very much exists and pretty nice to use.
I’m currently using it for small projects (under 100 users each), it’s definitely a niche choice, but it’s super easy to hand-roll from scratch. I’ve been running an app stack that’s pure dart, top to bottom, and it’s great being able to share code between my flutter app, web app, and backend.
I've been using Dart and Flutter for years, but I've never ever met anyone who's seriously using Dart for backend. That would be a very niche thing and not popular with teams.
In the last few days I've heard this same claim regarding other languages like Gleam and Rust for one reason or another that I don't know who to believe.
I got laid off recently and finally decided to dedicate some time to learn Rust, I started to work on an an idea I've head for a while, to create a game server to play Thai chess inspired by lichess.org, in fact, I plan to use several of their assets.
I'll use Rust for the backend even though it's probably an over kill, but it's the best way to learn for me, doing something with the language. I have some of the front end move logic and board done, I plan to start working on the API soon, after I finish a Rust book I'm reading. Here's some of the code if anybody is interested: https://github.com/thaichess-org.
I started before the guide was published. I am 40 years in on challenging myself and learning and improving and there remains so much more I have the opportunity to master.
I myself am spending a lot of time leveling up, I recently realized there are so many things about programming and CS that I don't know about or only have a superficial knowledge. There's so much to learn but it's very rewarding.
Yes, I know there's probably better options than Rust for building APIs, but I wanted to learn it, so why not?