Lemmy is written in Rust and even high experienced and capable C++ developers do not know how to work with it, plus the language itself is not finished.
that’s just plain false. It’s easier to use Rust than C++ because most of the pitfalls are eliminated, and many tools helping to get things done are built in nd have good quality. C++ devs just have a hard time getting used to the differences. It’s also questionable whether rust is unfinished. It’s not like its “beta” or “pre-release”, and if your point is that it’s still getting new features, then consider that C++ and Python does too.
python is better for prototyping, and it can be better for tools and simpler software. but if you think Python is better for “production” generally, then look at Matrix Synapse.
that being said, I agree that Rust is more complicated than other languages, but not by a large margin. but yeah, it matters for beginner friendliness, and I would never recommend Rust for someone who is just a beginner in programming; but neither would I recommend C or C++ for them.
though to be honest, I would be happier if the defacto beginner friendly language would be something with stricter types.
While I come from more of the Rust sort of side of things, and I agree with you that I’d rather have widely-used languages having static typing (though I’ve written more Python than Rust), it’s also true that different languages have different degrees of uptake in different areas.
As things stand, Piefed, Lemmy, and Mbin all have an integrated Web frontend and backend, with third party client support via API. That is, they work kind of like Reddit does, not Usenet or IRC servers, where the backends and the frontends are entirely different projects.
I’m confident that Python has vastly more uptake for frontend Web development than Rust does. That means that it’s going to be way easier to find contributors who understand how to build a Web UI who know Python than who know Rust.
If there were a split from this approach — that is, if the UI became decoupled from the backends, and users just used Aphrodite or mlym or whatever, and the backend wound up looking something like Usenet server software, — then I think that there might be a stronger argument for doing the backend in something like Rust, depending upon how it was structured.
But I think that Rust probably creates a high bar for attracting front-end contributors who are knowledgeable in building Web systems.
I’d also point out that Reddit started out in Common Lisp — Paul Graham, who was involved with its early days, is a huge fan of Common Lisp — but eventually was rewritten in Python.
EDIT: There’s also Sublinks, in Java, but it doesn’t look like it’s getting a lot of activity.
that’s just plain false. It’s easier to use Rust than C++ because most of the pitfalls are eliminated, and many tools helping to get things done are built in nd have good quality. C++ devs just have a hard time getting used to the differences. It’s also questionable whether rust is unfinished. It’s not like its “beta” or “pre-release”, and if your point is that it’s still getting new features, then consider that C++ and Python does too.
python is better for prototyping, and it can be better for tools and simpler software. but if you think Python is better for “production” generally, then look at Matrix Synapse.
that being said, I agree that Rust is more complicated than other languages, but not by a large margin. but yeah, it matters for beginner friendliness, and I would never recommend Rust for someone who is just a beginner in programming; but neither would I recommend C or C++ for them.
though to be honest, I would be happier if the defacto beginner friendly language would be something with stricter types.
While I come from more of the Rust sort of side of things, and I agree with you that I’d rather have widely-used languages having static typing (though I’ve written more Python than Rust), it’s also true that different languages have different degrees of uptake in different areas.
As things stand, Piefed, Lemmy, and Mbin all have an integrated Web frontend and backend, with third party client support via API. That is, they work kind of like Reddit does, not Usenet or IRC servers, where the backends and the frontends are entirely different projects.
I’m confident that Python has vastly more uptake for frontend Web development than Rust does. That means that it’s going to be way easier to find contributors who understand how to build a Web UI who know Python than who know Rust.
If there were a split from this approach — that is, if the UI became decoupled from the backends, and users just used Aphrodite or mlym or whatever, and the backend wound up looking something like Usenet server software, — then I think that there might be a stronger argument for doing the backend in something like Rust, depending upon how it was structured.
But I think that Rust probably creates a high bar for attracting front-end contributors who are knowledgeable in building Web systems.
I’d also point out that Reddit started out in Common Lisp — Paul Graham, who was involved with its early days, is a huge fan of Common Lisp — but eventually was rewritten in Python.
EDIT: There’s also Sublinks, in Java, but it doesn’t look like it’s getting a lot of activity.