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  5. F# vs Rust

F# vs Rust

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Rust
Rust
Stacks6.1K
Followers5.0K
Votes1.2K
GitHub Stars107.6K
Forks13.9K
F#
F#
Stacks779
Followers556
Votes399
GitHub Stars2.2K
Forks316

F# vs Rust: What are the differences?

Introduction

F# and Rust are both programming languages that have gained popularity in recent years. While both languages offer unique features and advantages, there are several key differences between them that set them apart. In this article, we will explore the main differences between F# and Rust.

  1. Memory Management: One of the major differences between F# and Rust lies in their approach to memory management. F# is a garbage-collected language, meaning that it relies on automatic memory management to deallocate objects that are no longer needed. On the other hand, Rust takes a different approach and offers manual memory management through its ownership system. This allows Rust to guarantee memory safety without the need for a garbage collector, making it more suitable for systems programming and resource-constrained environments.

  2. Concurrency: Another significant difference between F# and Rust is their approach to concurrency. F# provides built-in support for asynchronous programming with its async/await syntax, allowing developers to write concurrent and parallel code easily. Rust, on the other hand, takes a different approach and relies on its ownership and borrowing system to ensure safe concurrent access to shared data. This approach allows Rust to provide low-level control over concurrency while still guaranteeing memory safety.

  3. Programming Paradigm: F# is a multi-paradigm language that supports functional programming, object-oriented programming, and imperative programming. This makes it highly versatile and well-suited for a wide range of applications. Rust, on the other hand, is primarily a systems programming language with a strong emphasis on safety, performance, and low-level control. While Rust allows functional programming to some extent, its main focus is on providing a safe and efficient alternative to languages like C++.

  4. Error Handling: F# and Rust also differ in their approach to error handling. F# uses exception handling as its primary mechanism for dealing with errors and exceptional conditions. Developers can use try/catch blocks to handle exceptions and propagate errors up the call stack. In contrast, Rust promotes the use of panics and Result type for error handling. Panics are used to handle unrecoverable errors, while the Result type is used to represent recoverable errors. This approach ensures that error handling is explicitly handled by the developer, contributing to Rust's emphasis on safety and reliability.

  5. Tooling and Ecosystem: The tooling and ecosystem around F# and Rust also differ significantly. F# has strong integration with the .NET ecosystem, providing access to a wide range of libraries and frameworks for building various types of applications. It can leverage the power of the .NET platform and take advantage of features such as interoperability with other .NET languages, extensive documentation, and mature tooling. Rust, on the other hand, has its own unique ecosystem, with a focus on systems programming and low-level development. It offers a growing number of libraries and tools specifically designed for Rust, ensuring a seamless development experience for systems programming tasks.

  6. Community and Adoption: Both F# and Rust have active and supportive communities, but their scopes and adoption differ. F# has been around for longer and has a larger user base, thanks to its integration with the .NET platform. This provides access to a large pool of developers and resources. On the other hand, Rust is a newer language that has been gaining popularity rapidly, particularly in the systems programming and web development domains. Rust's fast-growing community and adoption indicate its potential for future growth and its appeal to developers seeking safety, performance, and low-level control.

In summary, F# and Rust differ in various aspects such as memory management, concurrency, programming paradigm, error handling, tooling and ecosystem, as well as community and adoption. These differences make each language suitable for different use cases and highlight their unique strengths and advantages.

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Advice on Rust, F#

Timm
Timm

VP Of Engineering at Flexperto GmbH

Nov 10, 2020

Decided

We have a lot of experience in JavaScript, writing our services in NodeJS allows developers to transition to the back end without any friction, without having to learn a new language. There is also the option to write services in TypeScript, which adds an expressive type layer. The semi-shared ecosystem between front and back end is nice as well, though specifically NodeJS libraries sometimes suffer in quality, compared to other major languages.

As for why we didn't pick the other languages, most of it comes down to "personal preference" and historically grown code bases, but let's do some post-hoc deduction:

Go is a practical choice, reasonably easy to learn, but until we find performance issues with our NodeJS stack, there is simply no reason to switch. The benefits of using NodeJS so far outweigh those of picking Go. This might change in the future.

PHP is a language we're still using in big parts of our system, and are still sometimes writing new code in. Modern PHP has fixed some of its issues, and probably has the fastest development cycle time, but it suffers around modelling complex asynchronous tasks, and (on a personal note) lack of support for writing in a functional style.

We don't use Python, Elixir or Ruby, mostly because of personal preference and for historic reasons.

Rust, though I personally love and use it in my projects, would require us to specifically hire for that, as the learning curve is quite steep. Its web ecosystem is OK by now (see https://www.arewewebyet.org/), but in my opinion, it is still no where near that of the other web languages. In other words, we are not willing to pay the price for playing this innovation card.

Haskell, as with Rust, I personally adore, but is simply too esoteric for us. There are problem domains where it shines, ours is not one of them.

682k views682k
Comments
Johan
Johan

Jan 28, 2021

Decided

Context: Writing an open source CLI tool.

Go and Rust over Python: Simple distribution.

With Go and Rust, just build statically compiled binaries and hand them out.

With Python, have people install with "pip install --user" and not finding the binaries :(.

Go and Rust over Python: Startup and runtime performance

Go and Rust over Python: No need to worry about which Python interpreter version is installed on the users' machines.

Go over Rust: Simplicity; Rust's memory management comes at a development / maintenance cost.

Go over Rust: Easier cross compiles from macOS to Linux.

397k views397k
Comments
Omar
Omar

Feb 23, 2021

Needs adviceonRubyRubyJavaScriptJavaScriptRustRust

I was thinking about adding a new technology to my current stack (Ruby and JavaScript). But, I want a compiled language, mainly for speed and scalability reasons compared to interpreted languages. I have tried each one (Rust, Java, and Kotlin). I loved them, and I don't know which one can offer me more opportunities for the future (I'm in my first year of software engineering at university).

Which language should I choose?

443k views443k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Rust
Rust
F#
F#

Rust is a systems programming language that combines strong compile-time correctness guarantees with fast performance. It improves upon the ideas of other systems languages like C++ by providing guaranteed memory safety (no crashes, no data races) and complete control over the lifecycle of memory.

F# is a mature, open source, cross-platform, functional-first programming language. It empowers users and organizations to tackle complex computing problems with simple, maintainable and robust code.

Statistics
GitHub Stars
107.6K
GitHub Stars
2.2K
GitHub Forks
13.9K
GitHub Forks
316
Stacks
6.1K
Stacks
779
Followers
5.0K
Followers
556
Votes
1.2K
Votes
399
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 146
    Guaranteed memory safety
  • 133
    Fast
  • 89
    Open source
  • 75
    Minimal runtime
  • 73
    Pattern matching
Cons
  • 28
    Hard to learn
  • 24
    Ownership learning curve
  • 12
    Unfriendly, verbose syntax
  • 4
    Variable shadowing
  • 4
    Many type operations make it difficult to follow
Pros
  • 53
    Pattern-matching
  • 42
    Makes programming fun again
  • 38
    Type providers
  • 32
    Delightful
  • 30
    Frictionless
Cons
  • 3
    Microsoft tend to ignore F# preferring to hype C#
  • 2
    Interop between C# can sometimes be difficult
  • 1
    Type Providers can be unstable in larger solutions
  • 1
    Hype

What are some alternatives to Rust, F#?

JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Elixir

Elixir

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

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