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rust-lang / prev.rust-lang.org

The previous Rust website. The current website's code is at https://github.com/rust-lang/www.rust-lang.org.
https://prev.rust-lang.org
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New Website Logo: Piston #351

Open bvssvni opened 8 years ago

bvssvni commented 8 years ago
brson commented 8 years ago

Hi @bvssvni. Thanks for opening this issue. Piston is a friend of Rust.

Right now though we're reluctant to add Piston to this page, even though it is undoubtedly the single largest Rust OSS project. Our fear is that having Piston on this page would open the floodgates, and every ambitious Rust project would also want to be listed here. It's not clear what criteria we might use to justify Piston being on the page, but not others, like e.g. Redox.

That's not to say we don't want to promote Piston; we really do.

cc @aturon

aturon commented 8 years ago

Thanks @brson. This kind of curation is always difficult -- it's hard to find clear lines to draw -- but @brson laid out a very nice comment about our current thinking here. This page is specifically about encouraging more companies to use Rust in production, by showing them how many are already "betting on Rust" in some way.

Of course, we also want to highlight the amazing OSS ecosystem around Rust; that's a distinct aim from this page. There have been some efforts to start curating the ecosystem, but in the coming months the core team would like to invest more energy and official weight behind such a page.

bvssvni commented 8 years ago

What part of "in production" and "betting on Rust" is not describing Piston? :smile:

Of course, you have to draw the line somewhere, that's OK. I guess Piston is big enough to be on both sides of the line, so people might make up whatever arguments they like for or against. That is a very understandable problem.

Well, you can just say "no, because we fear floodgate" and it won't hurt Piston much anyway. There is plenty of promotion of the project all over the place. I just saw the post and thought it was a bit shame that Piston wasn't there, since it's obviously is used in production, but also thought it might be a problem with other projects that needs more promotion, and that might seem unfair if Piston is there, but other projects aren't.

Just to make it clear, I'm using Rust in my company every day, but it's not like I'm selling something yet. It might take many years to get there. The reason I'm interested in Rust is to be able to maintain a code base at the size of the software I'm selling.

brson commented 8 years ago

@bvssvni I wasn't aware that Piston is used in production! Can you say more? I haven't seen you mention your company before. What is it up to?

I do think there's a distinction between "used in production" and "production user". No doubt many Piston crates are being deployed in production scenarios. I'm less sure of whether anyone is yet relying on Piston the game engine in production.

bvssvni commented 8 years ago

My company is Cutout Pro.

I'm using Piston the game engine for the tech in the next version of my 2D animation software. It's not finished yet and there might take years to complete it. I'm betting years on Rust, because I believe it will pay off in the long run.

One of the biggest problems with the old code base was incredibly hard getting it to work on different Windows versions, in schools, old computers, different language settings, different graphics cards. I missed the transition to mobile and touch screen devices because the code base could not be ported. Was waiting for the Mono framework to mature for years, and keeping the code bug free turned out to be a very hard problem. Then I learned C to get more control at the lower level, and looked at Haskell for managing a big code base. One day I stumbled over Rust and even there was no graphics libraries to speak of, the community was great and it checked off all my requirements as a language for programming in the large.

Initially I thought that wrapping Cairo was the way to go, but it did not work very well, but then I got inspired by the creator of Idris to do something on my own. This was how Piston started. Helped the gamedev community grow to increase the chance of Rust succeeding. Worked on Rust-Empty to make it easier to get started, which was later replaced by Cargo. Done a lot of testing of Gfx to help the development, because I believe a graphics API that can target next-gen hardware and cross platform is important. This effort is finally starting to pay off.

I'm looking forward to stabilizing the core and the 2D graphics libraries, and using all the new knowledge I've gained while working with Rust. I specialize on products that can be used across a wide range of age groups and expertise and for being fun to use and helps developing creativity. My customers are people from all backgrounds, animators, game developers, children, retired, rich and poor. I use Rust because it's not possible to do it another way at this scale. This is what I've been doing the past 2.5 years with the goal of creating a new product.

Piston is not the goal. Piston is the road I have to build to reach the goal, just like other people working on Piston have different goals.

So, that's what I mean by "betting on Rust". Perhaps a large bet, but I believed in the Rust community and I was right.

brson commented 8 years ago

Ooh, thanks for the link and the description of what you are working on! I didn't realize you had this product already, nor that Piston was going to feed into it. Really neat.

cc @aturon

bstrie commented 8 years ago

@bvssvni If your company is using Rust as a part of a core product then I think you should edit this issue to make it about your company. :) Especially if you write a blog post (for the "Url describing Rust usage"), wherein you can cross-promote Piston.

I tend to agree that the intended audience of this page are companies who are considering using Rust, but want to see what other companies have already bet money on Rust (and especially read some testimonials as to their experience). A page of "cool projects using Rust" can be considered separately. :)

aturon commented 8 years ago

Wow, @bvssvni, thanks for the inspiring writeup! I agree with @bstrie that, given the aims/approach of this page, it makes sense to submit this under your company name.

bvssvni commented 8 years ago

OK, will change to make it under my company name.