Discussion on: My first impressions of Rust

[Deepu K Sasidharan]

Thanks for the response. The reason I thought the implicit return is error-prone is as below

    let number = {
        5 + 6;
    };

    let number = { 
        5 + 6 
    };

Both are valid as per compiler but have different meanings. I wasn't aware of the () type and it makes a bit more sense, and ya seems like in most cases compiler would catch if you accidentally miss a ; or add one in a block scope. Anyway, it was a nitpick and I think I'll retain it as such as I still don't like it. Maybe having a keyword like yield would have been much nicer and explicit. I'm not a fan of anything implicit.

For shadowing, I think you missed my point. I have no problem with shadowing in a different scope, it is indeed a good thing. My problem as mentioned in post is with same scope shadowing, see below

fn main() {
    let foo = "hello";

    // do stuff here

    let foo = "world";

    println!("The value of number is: {}", foo);
}

How is it any different from below in actual practice, it gives you a way to work around an immutable variable without marking it immutable. Again its a bit implicit IMO

fn main() {
    let mut foo = "hello";

    // do stuff here

    foo = "world";

    println!("The value of number is: {}", foo);
}

About iterators and stuff, I would still prefer to have fewer ways to that

Also, I agree, as I use the language more I'm sure I would come to terms with these and I might even like some of them more, the same case with JavaScript, there is a lot of things I don't like about it but it is still one of my favorite languages.

Ya, I found the lifetime stuff to be strange but didn't form an opinion on them yet. So far it seems like a necessity due to language design.

[Louis Cloete]

The compiler will tell you exactly why your number, which is of the unit type (()) won't work in a context expecting an integer. I don't think that's really so much of an issue. Also, you can post on users.rust-lang.org and probably be helped within 30 minutes with a very detailed explanation of your mistake and its fixes.

[Deepu K Sasidharan]

Yes, I agree that Rust compiler is quite wonderful and when actually using it, it will not be a big deal. But from a readability standpoint I would still prefer explicit intent. To me good code should be readable even to someone not familiar with a language. Of course no language is perfect in that sense but one can dream of it right.