BUILD 2020 is taking place this week, there are a 4 Rust related talks:<p>- Expert Q&A: C#/C++/Rust WinRT Team<p>- The 30 Min Beginner Rust Coding Challenge<p>- Intro to Rust<p>- Microsoft's Safe Systems Programming Languages Effort<p>More info at:<p><a href="https://mybuild.microsoft.com/sessions?t=%257B%2522from%2522%253A%25222020-05-19T00%253A00%253A00%252B02%253A00%2522%252C%2522to%2522%253A%25222020-05-21T23%253A59%253A00%252B02%253A00%2522%257D&q=rust&s=%257B%2522name%2522%253A%2522translate.refine.label.sort.relevance%2522%252C%2522type%2522%253A0%257D" rel="nofollow">https://mybuild.microsoft.com/sessions?t=%257B%2522from%2522...</a>
Does Microsoft even use WinRT "internally"? Back in the day, e.g. Office would simply ignore all DevDiv and WinDiv bullshit and roll its own frameworks and even _custom controls_ libraries.
See also <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23033451" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23033451</a> from a couple weeks ago.
So they're giving another candy, this time to developers who like/want to use Rust. Not bad for them.<p>My personal view/situation is a bit different. I think this is nothing more but yet another attempt by Microsoft to woo customers into a set of technologies/runtimes/APIs that are way more constrained that good ole Win32. On windows desktop GUI front I was using Delphi since 90s and barring few easily fixable hick ups what did work then works as a charm even now. So instead of wasting my time on their infinite ever changing set of front end tech I stayed on a proven path and that saved me a ton of money. And my desktop development is still the same with extra niceties as added multi platform ability and free and open source Delphi's alternative Lazarus/FreePascal combo.
I might have to see if the winrt bindings are better than the generic rust ecosystem. I think the idea of rust is a good one, but the language isn't really something I would ever recommend for a professional project at this point.<p>I can get around the fact that using rust sometimes feels like programming with one arm tied behind my back. The real problem is the ecosystem. I've hardly used rust enough to feel like I've got a really broad feel for the ecosystem, but the feeling I have at the moment is that its quite possible to hit deal breaker levels of problems when attempting to combine differing libraries into the same application. Particularity when one is using threads in an application. I needed to pass one libraries reference into a thread, where another library needed to have the instance used in a closure. It turned out to be impossible without either using unsafe code or adding additional traits to both libraries. A trick made much harder because I then had to wrangle cargo to pick up internally maintained versions of libraries instead of the main cargo repos.<p>So, I get the distinct feeling that rust is great if you can stick to a single threaded programs, or you don't rely on 3rd party libraries. Mix the two, and your in deep trouble.