[NCLUG] Some developments in Rust.

[Bob Proulx]

Brian Sturgill wrote:
> Last week at Microsoft Build, Microsoft openly started pushing developers
> to Rust.

Interesting information!  Thanks for posting it.

I think the move to memory safe languages like Rust is a good thing.
However I am still pessimistic and know that there will still be
bugs.  It will just be a different type of bug.  But if they can
remove the memory bugs that is a large class of problem that
statistically has been a huge historical problem.  People in mass just
can't seem to avoid memory bugs!

> Another big new area with Rust is its generation of WASM (Web Assembly
> Language).
> Microsoft is also heavily into that:
> https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-why-we-used-programming-language-rust-over-go-for-webassembly-on-kubernetes-app/
> 
> The reason is interesting... modern container approaches are rather heavy
> weight. WASM, designed to run independent programs in a single browser, is
> a good lightweight alternative to a container.

Is that really apples to apples?  Running server side processes in
containers is one thing.  Distributing processes to client browsers is
a different thing.  There are good uses for both but they are
different things.

I have been enjoying some of the educational simulations which get
distributed locally to my browser.  That's great.  And it saves the
load on the server.  I am the one watching the simulation unfold so
that works great.  It is good that it is my electricity that is being
used.

> A good place to start is:
> https://www.rust-lang.org/what/wasm

Cool resource!

Bob