vision doc: what do people love about Rust?

[nikomatsakis]

cc @rust-lang/project-vision-doc-2025

Rendered

[jackh726]

A couple typos identified in CI, but overall I love this.

[Kobzol]

Great story! I think that there might be perhaps a bit too many quotes to my liking, but in the end that's why you did the interviews, so why not.

I also didn't understand what do those recommendations mean. It's a bit weird that a blog post on the official Rust blog recommends something to.. Rust? 😆 I mean, I get what you mean by it, but it looks a bit weird still.

Btw, some quote authors are probably relatively easy to identify 😆 But I suppose that's not really an issue.

[Kobzol]

Suggested change

Rust has been named Stack Overflow's Most Loved (now called Most Admired) language ever since our 1.0 release in 2015. That means people who use Rust want to keep using Rust[^gleam]--and not just for performance-heavy stuff or embedded development, but for shell scripts, web apps, and all kinds of things you wouldn't expect. One of our participants captured it well when they said, "At this point, I don't want to write code in any other language but Rust."

Rust has been named Stack Overflow's Most Loved (now called Most Admired) language every year since our 1.0 release in 2015. That means people who use Rust want to keep using Rust[^gleam]--and not just for performance-heavy stuff or embedded development, but for shell scripts, web apps, and all kinds of things you wouldn't expect. One of our participants captured it well when they said, "At this point, I don't want to write code in any other language but Rust."

[Kobzol]

Suggested change

When we sat down to crunch the vision doc data, one of the things we really wanted to explain was: *What is it that inspires that strong loyalty to Rust?*[^messitup] Based on the interviews, the answer is at once simple and complicated. The short version is that **Rust empowers them to write reliable and efficient software**. If that sounds familiar, it should: [it's the slogan that we have right there on our web page](https://www.rust-lang.org). The more interesting question is **how** that empowerment comes about, and what that it implies for how we evolve Rust.

When we sat down to crunch the vision doc data, one of the things we really wanted to explain was: *What is it that inspires that strong loyalty to Rust?*[^messitup] Based on the interviews, the answer is at once simple and complicated. The short version is that **Rust empowers them to write reliable and efficient software**. If that sounds familiar, it should: [it's the slogan that we have right there on our web page](https://www.rust-lang.org). The more interesting question is **how** that empowerment comes about, and what it implies for how we evolve Rust.

[Kobzol]

Suggested change

	The first thing we noticed is that, throughout every conversation, no matter whether soneone is writing their first Rust program or has been writing it for years, no matter whether they're building massive data clusters or embedded devices or just messing around, there are a consistent set of things that they say they like about Rust.
	The first thing we noticed is that, throughout every conversation, no matter whether someone is writing their first Rust program or has been using it for years, no matter whether they're building massive data clusters or embedded devices or just messing around, there are a consistent set of things that they say they like about Rust.

[Kobzol]

Suggested change

>

To make it clearer that those are two distinct quotes? (same for other quote pairs)

[nikomatsakis]

@Kobzol

Btw, some quote authors are probably relatively easy to identify 😆 But I suppose that's not really an issue.

I'd rather they aren't, so if you have particular suggestions where you feel we could work harder to anonymize or omit, either PM me or let me know here in comments.

[PLeVasseur]

This looks fantastic! 🥰

I left primarily two classes of comment:

• editorial bits
• bits which seemed worthwhile to discuss from the safety-critical realm

Happy for any feedback on what I left

[PLeVasseur]

Maybe a reword to help it flow into the next couple of sections?

Suggested change

	Another, of course, is **efficiency**, especially in data-center contexts:
	Another, of course, is **efficiency**, from data-centers to safety-critical embedded devices:

[PLeVasseur]

Spelling consistency

Suggested change

	> "Cargo is an amazing package manager. It is probably the best one I've ever worked with. I don't think I ever run into issues with cargo. It just works." -- Software engineer with production Rust experience
	> "Cargo is an amazing package manager. It is probably the best one I've ever worked with. I don't think I ever run into issues with Cargo. It just works." -- Software engineer with production Rust experience

[PLeVasseur]

Suggested change

> "I've been working with arbitrary subsidiaries of Bosch for the last 25 years. Always doing software development mostly in the Java space... two years ago I started peeking into the automotive sector. In that context it was a natural consequence to either start working with C++ (which I did not want to do) or take the opportunity to dive into the newly established Rust ecosystem." -- Senior software engineer working in automotive embedded systems

> "I've been working with arbitrary subsidiaries of [a multinational engineering and technology company] for the last 25 years. Always doing software development mostly in the Java space... two years ago I started peeking into the automotive sector. In that context it was a natural consequence to either start working with C++ (which I did not want to do) or take the opportunity to dive into the newly established Rust ecosystem." -- Senior software engineer working in automotive embedded systems

[PLeVasseur]

Missing opening "

Suggested change

	> I find it more opaque, harder to get my head around it. The types describe not just the interface of the thing but also the lifetime and how you are accessing it, whether it's on the stack or the heap, there's a lot of stuff packed into them." -- Software engineer working on data science platforms
	> "I find it more opaque, harder to get my head around it. The types describe not just the interface of the thing but also the lifetime and how you are accessing it, whether it's on the stack or the heap, there's a lot of stuff packed into them." -- Software engineer working on data science platforms

[PLeVasseur]

Probably transcription typo

Suggested change

> "The fact that there are still plenty of situations where you go *that library looks useful, I want to use that library* and then that immediately locks you into one of Tokyo or one of the other runtimes, and you're like *that's a bit disappointing because I was trying to write a library as well and now now I'm locked into a runtime*." -- Safety systems engineer working on functional safety for Linux

> "The fact that there are still plenty of situations where you go *that library looks useful, I want to use that library* and then that immediately locks you into one of tokio-rs or one of the other runtimes, and you're like *that's a bit disappointing because I was trying to write a library as well and now now I'm locked into a runtime*." -- Safety systems engineer working on functional safety for Linux

[PLeVasseur]

Spelling consistency, clarify it's currently proposal

Suggested change

	We recommend creating an RFC that defines the goals we are shooting for as we work on Rust. The RFC should cover the experience of using Rust in total (language, tools, and libraries). This RFC could be authored by the user research team, though it's not clear who should accept it — perhaps the user research team itself, or perhaps the leadership council.
	We recommend creating an RFC that defines the goals we are shooting for as we work on Rust. The RFC should cover the experience of using Rust in total (language, tools, and libraries). This RFC could be authored by the proposed User Research team, though it's not clear who should accept it — perhaps the User Research team itself, or perhaps the leadership council.

[PLeVasseur]

While there are a number of different ways of accomplishing async in-practice in the Rust ecosystem, safety-critical domains may impose unique requirements and opportunities:

"We're not sure how async will work out in the long-run [in Rust]. [..] A lot of our software is highly asynchronous and a lot of our demons in the AUTOSAR Adaptive Platform world are basically following a reactor pattern. [..] [C++14] doesn't really support these concepts, so some of this is lack of familiarity." -- Team lead at an automotive software company developing middleware in Rust

"If we want to make use of [async Rust] of course you need some runtime which is providing this with all the quality artifacts process artifacts [for ISO 26262]." -- Team lead at an automotive software company developing middleware in Rust

[PLeVasseur]

As Rust gets its footing in domains which have a regulatory regime, like safety-critical, some wrinkles appear:

"[We use crates from crates.io] mainly for things in the beginning where we need to set up things fast proof of concept, but we try to track those dependencies very explicitly with care and also for the critical parts of the software try to get rid of it in the long run [due to automotive regulatory processes around ISO 26262]." -- Team lead at an automotive software company developing middleware in Rust

"I had experiences in the past where all of a sudden I was upgrading the compiler [that my toolchain and dependencies] didn't work anymore [for the Tier 3 target we're using]. [..] That's simply not acceptable. If you want to invest in some technology, you want to have a certain reliability. [..] Promoting it to a Tier Two target would at least as far as I know ensure that cross compiling to that target will always work with the 100 most used crates or whatever." -- A senior software engineer at a major Automaker

[PLeVasseur]

I'm not sure if this is too in-the-weeds, but it's a challenge I keep seeing in the safety-critical Rust community and I wanted to ideate here a bit.

Suggested change

There may be some unique opportunities and challenges when it comes to domains with a regulatory regime, such as safety-critical. A forming trend in safety-critical appears to be companies which open source their software and their safety manuals, but not their safety-qualification or safety-certification documents as they use them as a revenue stream. It seems worthwhile exploring a model that could allow the opening up of these documents while compensating the companies doing the work. There are still some liability challenges which would need to be worked through, but such a step could help safety-critical Rust flourish.