6 ms·

It wasn’t replacing one rust enum, it was replacing what are effectively multiple enums

• dzaima 8d ago
  How so? It's replacing multiple enum variants, but just one enum, "enum Value". (also; if anything, the title is implying the exact opposite of "Rust compiler was able to optimize ...", "Replacing a Rust [...] with [...]" is clearly moving away from Rust-magic to something else)
  • Brian_K_White 8d ago
    Probably in the sense that you can remove the word rust and nothing changes. It's not about some failure of rust to be efficient at enums, but the title says it is.
    • win311fwg 8d ago
      'Enum' is ill-defined so the addition of Rust is significant as it indicates what one can expect with how data is structured. There is nothing in that speaks to the Rust compiler or Rust being inefficient or anything of the sort. It remains unclear where this idea is coming from. There is nothing in title that would send you there. Unless, again, the title was edited at some point?
    • benatkin 8d ago
      If you replaced it with Zig, the situation changes.
    • maxime_cb 8d ago
      OP here: I think you're reading too much into the title. It's not about the failure of Rust. It's about where I stepped in with some custom optimizations for better performance. If you read the blog post, the solution implemented is very Rust-y as well. It uses a newtype with custom methods to try and make the code as nice and readable as possible. FWIW this post was very well received on the Rust subreddit. They loved it and it got over 350 upvotes, so that community definitely didn't receive it as some sort of attack on Rust.
      • CyberDildonics 7d ago
        I think you're reading too much into the title. I don't think it's fair to write a misleading title then tell people "they're reading too much into it". Implying one thing then walking it back in the article or having the article be about something totally different, then saying people should read the article and not pay attention to the title is just manipulative to your audience.
        • win311fwg 7d ago
          The problem is that there isn't anything misleading about the title. It is well understood that creative packing of data can provide optimizations under certain circumstances. Nobody should have reason to think otherwise. The title quite accurately captures what the rest of the article is about as well as any title possible can. What appears to be happening as we see in several comments is that some users cannot find any technical reason to use Rust so they rely on a belief that it is somehow magically perfect to justify using it and and the idea that it hasn't perfectly found some creative packing solution, despite the rest of us wondering why one would expect any compiler to – it not really being its job, is felt as an attack on their use of Rust. Someone developing irrational feelings towards an inanimate tool isn't on the article's author.
          • Brian_K_White 7d ago
            What's misleading about the title is that the title implies something about rust, while the content does not. Like I said in the first place, you can remove the word rust, and nothing changes. That's how you know what's wrong. It's like a news report saying "black man caught embezzeling". It might be a fact, but it's an irrelevant fact, and it begs the question why it was pointed out. He was probably also a vegetarian, Jewish, a bird watcher, an uncle... And it's not that there is some weird rule that you have to avoid saying black or rust or whatever. It's simply that if you say something, then the _only_ reasonable way to interpret it is that there was some reason to say it. You state an equation or give a list of items, it is irrational to assume anything other than that all of the terms or items are relevant. In this case, rust is just the language being used, which is happenstance. It doesn't matter what language was used. You don't have to go out of your way to hide the language or any silly suggestion like that, but reading the title alone says that there is something about rust and enums. There only 3 items in the title, rust, enum, 64bit word. You can't fault anyone for defaulting to the conclusion that rust, enum, and 64bit word are the essential concepts that will be discussed. The article isn't bad, and frankly the title isn't even so bad as to be a moral failing or anything. They ARE happening to be working in rust while developing this optimization. It's simply that it's also entirely correct and reasonable to read the title as saying the words that it says. And the title says something that the content does not.