Four videos about Rust

[Edward K. Ream]

Here are four videos that go beyond the Rust book.

Rust for dummies, part 1, is a general overview of ownership and borrowing.

Part 2 claims that Rust's type system is superior to all others.

This second video claims that object-oriented design isn't idiomatic in Rust.

The third video covers the intersection of common rust types with deeper programming theory. I found it fascinating. The video also introduces expert-level patterns and terminology (like turbo fish) not found in the Rust book. 

This anti-rust video contains a contrarian view. From the (official) text summary:

"There is something uniquely irritating about it's zealous and misleading marketing, wasted potential and gleeful disregard for the accumulated genius of decades of research. For all its obsession with security, rust's packaging and linking system end up creating more insecurity than it's limited model of safe memory can eliminate."

I suspect that my mentor, Bob Fitzwater, would have held a similar skeptical view.

Summary

I am not qualified to judge the competing claims. But maybe it's time to look into Ocaml :-)

I doubt that Rust will affect Leo, but I might eventually change my mind. For sure, Leo's desktop version, written in Python, will remain the reference standard.

Edward

[Thomas Passin]

On Thursday, February 12, 2026 at 6:30:44 AM UTC-5 Edward K. Ream wrote:

Here are four videos that go beyond the Rust book.

[snip]

Summary

I am not qualified to judge the competing claims. But maybe it's time to look into Ocaml :-)

I doubt that Rust will affect Leo, but I might eventually change my mind. For sure, Leo's desktop version, written in Python, will remain the reference standard.

I'd look into Julia. It's compiled and fast, and with its dynamic typing will probably seem like a comfortable fit to Python. From the home page:

"you can easily use libraries from Python, R, C/Fortran, and C++, and Java."

[jkn]

Just started watching/listening to the anti-rust video. What a fantastically sneery (British) tone of voice he has!

[Edward K. Ream]

On Thursday, February 12, 2026 at 5:30:44 AM UTC-6 Edward K. Ream wrote:

Here are four videos that go beyond the Rust book.

Thanks, Thomas and Jake, for your comments.

I'm not going to get involved in language wars, but I do have a few overall comments.

First, the 2025 developer survey is worth perusing. AI is obviously a hot topic.

Second, there is a significant difference between the most popular technologies vs languages admired and desired. Python does well in both categories; Rust does well only in the second. Lisp and functional programming languages do poorly in both.

Third, Bob Fitzwater counseled me to read the literature in two ways--look for what works in papers and look for what doesn't work. The same principle applies to languages and engineering generally. Rust's memory model generally works, imo. The first three papers explore the implications of Rust's design. Love Rust or hate it, I think the implications are fascinating.

Fourth, and most importantly, Python, Rust, TypeScript, and VS Code have millions of users and thousands of experienced devs. These are priceless resources. All these users find bugs, suggest improvements, and write plugins. No language guarantees correctness or safety. Only the constant work of devs makes any project reliable.

To repeat, I have no plans to study Rust in depth. Nor do I foresee converting any part of Leo to Rust. Otoh, I use Rust-based projects such as ruff formatter and ruff all the time.

Edward

[Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas]

Thanks for those links, particularly the contrarian view of Rust, as is good to see critical views against the fashionist tech of the moment (Rust, AI, you name it) and the certainly of some about finding the next big thing. 

My humble explorations continue in less popular places (Lua and YueScript, after playing with Nim) and OCalm seems also pretty interesting to me, despite not having time for it at the moment.

Cheers,

Offray

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[Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas]

I have been using Julia with my undergrad students this semester and it has been a breath of fresh air, and I think I like it better than Python. Besides its interactive notebook, Pluto, seems more in tune with my taste than Jupyter (it also inspired Marimo[1], the reactive Python notebook).

[1] https://marimo.io

Julia/Pluto allow me to swiftly prototype ideas that I port to other languages, like Lua (and hopefully Pharo/Grafoscopio in the future) if I need them in a more minimalist environment, as the only thing I don't like so far from Julia is its big binaries and the permission it needs to install/run it.

Cheers,

Offray

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[jkn]

I like the look of Marimo - thanks for the pointer

    J^n