On 08/21/2012 10:33 AM, Reidar Sollid wrote:
Hi,
JavaZone 2012 have accepted my lightning talk on Rust, it is just 10 min
so it is not much time to present Rust
http://javazone.no/incogito10/events/JavaZone%202012/sessions#a8b2bb04-03f2-4e88-9663-8387692af0e0
I am deffently doing task, but I need to build up to the tasks.
Any suggestions on what to press in during those 10 min to convince Java
devs that Rust is a great language?
Hi Reidar,
This is very cool!
I'm not too in-tune with the Java world right now, but here are some
notes comparing Java and Rust.
Two big selling points for a Java programmer are freedom from data races
and control over memory layout, and these are both topics relevant to
introducing Rust tasks.
Java has a complex memory model describing what happens when multiple
threads access shared memory. Rust has no shared memory, no volatile
keyword, no synchronized methods. Synchronization in Rust is almost
always based on message passing instead of locks.
That's not to say that Rust's memory model isn't complex, but it's
complex in entirely different ways. In Rust you have several options on
for where to place objects in memory. If you try you can completely
avoid the garbage collected heap. The Rust division between the GC heap
and the exchange heap is what allows Rust to avoid data races.
Rust and Java share some qualities:
* Safety guarantees - never crash, never write bad memory
* Both allow locals to be declared and assigned in separate statements
while ensuring that they are definitely initialized before use.
* Existential types - Rust traits can be used like Java interfaces by
casting the type to the trait, though this isn't the typical usage
because it involves vtables and is less efficient than using traits to
place bounds on type parameters.
Here are some common Java grips that Rust potentially can do better:
* No data races - there's no complex model describing when variables are
between threads, no volatiles.
* Global GC - Java has notorious stop-the-world GC behavior (though it
is very good). Rust's GC is per-task so when one task is collecting
others continue running in parallel. With care you can in theory write
tasks that never GC.
* Lambda expressions - Rust has a very simple syntax, so Rust code uses
them everywhere, whereas Java needs a lot of ceremony to do function-y
things.
Differences
* Unsafe sublanguage - Rust gives you low level control when you need it
* Control over memory layout - Local heap/echange heap/stack
* Iterators - Rust uses higher-order functions instead of iterator objects
* Expressiveness - Rust code is fairly compact. A determination to avoid
'public static void main' is the biggest influence of Java on Rust.
Good luck with your talk!
Regards,
Brian
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