Programmer Humor

...definitely takes some getting used to when you come from a non-memory safe language...

I actually think it's more like the opposite. The compiler takes the normal rules you apply to avoid issues with a non-memory safe language like C/C++ and enforces them where memory safe languages don't have those rules at all.

"What messages?"

Lol yes

But then someone will have to deal with it somewhere, better just unwrap it under the carpet.

Exactly

I’ll be honest, when I was learning to program in Java I mostly just wrapped errors in an empty try catch to shut them up, with no regard for actually handling them.

I assume most other learners do that too.

I think the problem is that many introductory examples use unwrap, so many beginner programmers don’t get exposed to alternatives like unwrap_or and the likes.

Can't resist pointing out how you should actually write the function in a "real" scenario (but still not handling errors properly), in case anyone wants to know.

If the list is guaranteed to have exactly two elements:

fn is_second_num_positive_exact(input: &str) -> bool {
    let (_, n) = input.split_once(',').unwrap();
    n.parse::<i32>().unwrap() > 0
}

If you want to test the last element:

fn is_last_num_positive(input: &str) -> bool {
    let n = input.split(',').next_back().unwrap();
    n.parse::<i32>().unwrap() > 0
}

If you want to test the 2nd (1-indexed) element:

fn is_second_num_positive(input: &str) -> bool {
    let n = input.split(',').nth(1).unwrap();
    n.parse::<i32>().unwrap() > 0
}

I mean yah. That’s what it takes. But like when I try to write code around Arc<_> the performance just tanks in highly concurrent work. Maybe it’s an OOP rust skill issue on my end. Lol.

Avoiding this leads, for me at least, to happiness and fearless, performant, concurrent work.

I’m not a huge fan of go-lang but I think they got it right with the don’t communicate by sharing memory thing.

It will become more complex when you start needing circular references in your datastructures.

You’ll be fine. You will learn the lifetime stuff and all will work out. It’s not that bad to be honest.

Worse in the sense of more errors, sure, but as you go you’ll pick up more of the rust patterns of thinking and imo it’s very worth it. It’s an odd blend and can be a bit verbose but I definitely prefer it to a pure OO or pure functional style language personally

Eh, I’m not entirely sold on that idea.

I think they do a good job of pointing out “this is a behavior/feature of Rust you need to understand.” However they can send you down the wrong path of correction.

The compiler error mentioning static lifetime specifiers of &str demonstrates both. It indicates to the developer that ownership and scopes will play a significant role when defining and accessing data. The error though will guide them towards researching how to define static lifetimes and possibly believe that they will need to set this in their functions and structs. Each time you look at questions about this error in places like Stack Overflow with example code you’ll find suggested solutions explaining that a manually-defined static lifetime isn’t necessary to resolve the problem.