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  5. R vs Rust

R vs Rust

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Rust
Rust
Stacks6.1K
Followers5.0K
Votes1.2K
GitHub Stars107.6K
Forks13.9K
R Language
R Language
Stacks3.9K
Followers1.9K
Votes418

R vs Rust: What are the differences?

R and Rust are both programming languages that serve different purposes and have different features. The key differences between R and Rust can be summarized as follows:

  1. Syntax: R is a dynamically typed language that is primarily used for statistical computing and graphics. It has a syntax that is similar to the English language, which makes it easy to learn and use for data analysis tasks. On the other hand, Rust is a statically typed language that is designed for systems programming. It has a syntax that is influenced by C++, but with additional features for memory safety and concurrency.

  2. Memory Management: In R, memory management is handled automatically by the garbage collector. This means that developers don't need to worry about manually allocating and releasing memory. In Rust, on the other hand, memory management is explicit and controlled by the developer. Rust uses a system of ownership, borrowing, and lifetimes to ensure memory safety without the need for garbage collection.

  3. Concurrency: R is not well-suited for concurrent programming, as it doesn't provide built-in support for parallelism. While there are packages that allow for parallel computing in R, it is not a core feature of the language. Rust, on the other hand, has built-in support for concurrent programming. It uses a powerful ownership system and the concept of threads to enable safe and efficient concurrent execution.

  4. Error Handling: In R, error handling is typically done through try-catch blocks and condition handling. R provides various mechanisms for handling errors and exceptions that occur during program execution. In Rust, error handling is done through the Result and Option types, which allow for explicit handling of errors and optional values. The Result type ensures that errors are properly handled and propagated throughout the program.

  5. Performance: R is an interpreted language, which means that it can be slower compared to compiled languages like Rust. While R provides libraries and packages for performance optimization, it is generally not as fast as Rust when it comes to computationally intensive tasks. Rust, being a compiled language, is designed for high performance and efficient memory usage.

  6. Community and Ecosystem: R has a large and active community of data scientists and statisticians. It has a wide range of libraries and packages for statistical analysis, data visualization, and machine learning. Rust, on the other hand, has a growing community and ecosystem. It is gaining popularity in areas such as systems programming, web development, and game development. Rust has a strong focus on safety, performance, and concurrency, which makes it an attractive choice for certain applications.

In summary, R and Rust differ significantly in terms of syntax, memory management, concurrency, error handling, performance, and community/ecosystem. R is primarily used for statistical computing and graphics, while Rust is designed for systems programming with a focus on safety, performance, and concurrency.

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Advice on Rust, R Language

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
R Language
R Language

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.

R provides a wide variety of statistical (linear and nonlinear modelling, classical statistical tests, time-series analysis, classification, clustering, ...) and graphical techniques, and is highly extensible.

Statistics
GitHub Stars
107.6K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
13.9K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
6.1K
Stacks
3.9K
Followers
5.0K
Followers
1.9K
Votes
1.2K
Votes
418
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
    Many type operations make it difficult to follow
  • 4
    No jobs
Pros
  • 86
    Data analysis
  • 64
    Graphics and data visualization
  • 55
    Free
  • 45
    Great community
  • 38
    Flexible statistical analysis toolkit
Cons
  • 6
    Very messy syntax
  • 4
    Tables must fit in RAM
  • 3
    Arrays indices start with 1
  • 2
    No push command for vectors/lists
  • 2
    Messy syntax for string concatenation

What are some alternatives to Rust, R Language?

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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