This is a good selling point because my main issue with Rust is the mental overload that comes with handholding myself throughout the development process.
I'm sure a lot of people just roll out of bed and naturally dance with the borrow checker like it's an old friend, but to me it's an hindrance. Maybe because I don't just only do Rust. I do plenty of other languages, or my brain is inferior, or both.
I feel that using Rust for low level stuff, all the mental overhead is worth it compared to using C: dance with the borrow checker, or get bitten by subtle bugs -- you choose :)
Using Rust for non-pref-critical web apps is a nice exercise, and yields a super fast and efficient app. But in that case the mental overhead is not worth it compared to a language and developer experience like Kotlin.
FWIW, for most of my Rust use cases I found I can get away with a relatively simple heuristic:
- if you pass it is a parameter, pass a read-only reference.
- if you return a value as a result of a function call, clone as necessary and return as an owned object, try to never return a reference.
- if the above two don’t fit, it’s thinking time; either the structure of the program can still afford for them with some refactor, or it’s genuinely incompatible.
The former avoids excessive copying and limits the bugs due to attempting to modify a cloned object, the latter limits the lifetime managing gymnastics required. The third allows to keep the program logic relatively simple except in the cases where it’s really required.
I'm sure a lot of people just roll out of bed and naturally dance with the borrow checker like it's an old friend, but to me it's an hindrance. Maybe because I don't just only do Rust. I do plenty of other languages, or my brain is inferior, or both.