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content/technical/2019/03/first-3-weeks-of-professional-rust.md
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For the last 15 years as professional programmer I have worked mostly with
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dynamic languages. First [Perl], then [Python], and for the last 10 years or so
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[Ruby]. I've also been writing [Rust] on the side for personal projects for
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nearly four years. Recently I started a new job and for the first time I'm
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writing Rust professionally. Rust represents quite a shift in language
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features, development process and tooling. I thought it would be interesting to
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reflect on that experience so far.
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_Note that some of my observations are not unique to Rust and would be equally
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present in other languages like [Haskell], [Kotlin], or [OCaml]._
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## Knowledge
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In my first week I hit up pretty hard against my knowledge of [lifetimes in
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Rust][lifetimes]. I was reasonably confident with them conceptually and their
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simple application but our code has some interesting type driven zero-copy
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parsing code that tested my knowledge. When encountering some compiler errors I
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was fortunate to have experienced colleagues to ask for help. It's been nice to
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be extending my knowledge and learning as I go.
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Interestingly I had mostly been building things without advanced lifetime
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knowledge up until this point. I think that sometimes the community puts too
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much emphasis on some of Rust's more advanced features when citing its learning
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curve. If you read [the book] you can get a very long way. Although that will
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depend on the types of applications or [data structures][linked-list] you're
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trying to build.
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## Confidence
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In my second week I implemented a change to make a certain pattern more
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ergonomic. It was refreshing to be able to build the initial functionality and
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then make a project wide change, confident that given it compiled after the
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change I _probably_ hadn't broken anything. I don't think I would have had the
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confidence to make such a change as early on in the Ruby projects I've worked
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on previously.
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## Testing
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I cringe whenever I see proponents of statically typed languages say things
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like, "if it compiles, it works", with misguided certainty. The compiler and
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language do eliminate whole classes of bugs that you'd need to test for in a
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dynamic language but that doesn't mean tests aren't needed.
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Rust has great built in support for testing and I've enjoyed being able to
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write tests focussed solely on the behaviour and logic of my code. Instead of
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behaviour and logic in addition to ensuring there are no syntax errors, or that
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`nil` is handled safely, etc.
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## Editor and Tooling
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[Neovim] is my primary text editor. I've been using [vim] or a derivative since
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the early 2000s. I have the [RLS] set up and working in my Neovim environment
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but less than a week in I started using [IntelliJ IDEA][IntelliJ] with the Rust
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and Vim emulation plugins for work. A week after that I started trialling
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[CLion] as I wanted a debugger.
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<figure>
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<img class="with-border" src="/images/2019/jetbrains-clion.png" alt="JetBrains CLion IDE" />
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<figcaption>JetBrains CLion IDE</figcaption>
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</figure>
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The impetus for the switch was that I was working with a colleague on a
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change that had a fairly wide impact on the code. We were practicing
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[compiler driven development] and were doing a repeated cycle of fix an error,
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compile, jump to next top most error. Vim's [quickfix] list + [:make] is
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designed to make this cycle easier too but I didn't have that set up at the
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time. I was doing a lot of manual jumping between files, whereas in IntelliJ I
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could just click the paths in the error messages.
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It's perhaps the combination of working on a foreign codebase and also trying
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to maximise efficiency when working with others that pushed me to seek out
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better tooling for work use. There is a ongoing to work to improve the RLS so I
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may still come back to Neovim and I continue to use it for personal
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projects.
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Other CLion features that I'm enjoying:
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* Reliable autocomplete
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* Reliable jump to definition, jump to impl block, find usages
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* Refactoring tooling (rename across project, extract method, extract variable)
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* Built in debugger
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[VS Code] offers some of these features too. However, since they are built on
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the RLS they suffer many of the same issues I had in Neovim. Additionally I
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think the Vim emulation plugin for IntelliJ is more complete, or at least more
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predictable for a long time vim user. This is despite the latter actually using
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Neovim under the covers.
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## Debugging
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In Ruby with a gem like [pry-byebug] it's trivial to put a `binding.pry` in
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some code to be dropped into a debugger + REPL at that point in the code. This
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is harder with Rust. `println!` or `dbg!` based debugging can get you a
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surprisingly long way and had served me well for most of my personal projects.
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When building some parsing code I quickly felt the need to use a real
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debugger in order to step through, and examine execution of a failing test.
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It's possible to do this on the command line with the `rust-gdb` or `rust-lldb`
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wrappers that come with Rust. However, I find them fiddly to use
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and verbose to operate.
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CLion makes it simple to add and remove break points by clicking in the gutter,
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run a single test under the debugger, visually step through the code, see all
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local variables, step up and down the call stack, etc. These are possible with
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the command line tools (which CLIon is using behind the scenes), but it's nice
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to have them built in and available with a single click of the mouse.
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## Conclusion
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So far I am enjoying my new role. There have been some great learning
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opportunities and surprising tooling changes. I'm also keen to keep an eye on
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the frequency of bugs encountered in production, their type (such as panic or
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incorrect logic), their source, and ease of resolution. I look forward to
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writing more about our work in the future.
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<div class="seperator"><hr class="left">✦<hr class="right"></div>
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Previous Post: [A Coding Retreat and Getting Embedded Rust Running on a SensorTag](/technical/2019/03/sensortag-embedded-rust-coding-retreat/)
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[:make]: https://neovim.io/doc/user/quickfix.html#:make
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[CLion]: https://www.jetbrains.com/clion/
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[compiler driven development]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ch20-02-multithreaded.html#building-the-threadpool-struct-using-compiler-driven-development
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[linked-list]: https://rust-unofficial.github.io/too-many-lists/
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[Haskell]: https://www.haskell.org/
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[IntelliJ]: https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/
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[Kotlin]: https://kotlinlang.org/
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[lifetimes]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ch19-02-advanced-lifetimes.html
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[Neovim]: https://neovim.io/
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[null]: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Null-References-The-Billion-Dollar-Mistake-Tony-Hoare
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[OCaml]: https://ocaml.org/
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[Perl]: https://www.perl.org/
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[pry-byebug]: https://github.com/deivid-rodriguez/pry-byebug
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[Python]: https://www.python.org/
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[quickfix]: https://neovim.io/doc/user/quickfix.html
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[RLS]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rls
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[Ruby]: https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/
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[Rust]: https://www.rust-lang.org/
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[the book]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/index.html
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[vim]: https://www.vim.org/
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[VS Code]: https://code.visualstudio.com/
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@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
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---
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title: My First 3 Weeks of Professional Rust
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extra: Reflecting on the first 3 weeks of writing Rust in my new job.
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kind: article
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section: technical
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created_at: 2019-03-24 09:45:00.000000000 +11:00
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#updated_at: 2019-03-23T13:16:07+11:00
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keywords:
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- rust
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short_url:
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@ -230,6 +230,7 @@ next year.
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<div class="seperator"><hr class="left">✦<hr class="right"></div>
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Previous Post: [Rebuilding My Personal Infrastructure With Alpine Linux and Docker](/technical/2019/02/alpine-linux-docker-infrastructure/)
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Next Post: [My First 3 Weeks of Professional Rust](/technical/2019/03/first-3-weeks-of-professional-rust/)
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[cargo-binutils]: https://crates.io/crates/cargo-binutils
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[carmack]: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2110408722526967&id=100006735798590
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@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ extra: I attended a small coding retreat with some friends and worked on running
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kind: article
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section: technical
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created_at: 2019-03-12 19:45:00.000000000 +11:00
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updated_at: 2019-03-23T13:16:07+11:00
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updated_at: 2019-03-24T13:01:51+11:00
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keywords:
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- rust
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- embedded
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