Identifying Barriers to Adoption for Rust through Online Discourse

Authors Anna Zeng, Will Crichton



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Author Details

Anna Zeng
  • Stanford University, USA
Will Crichton
  • Stanford University, USA

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Anna Zeng and Will Crichton. Identifying Barriers to Adoption for Rust through Online Discourse. In 9th Workshop on Evaluation and Usability of Programming Languages and Tools (PLATEAU 2018). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 67, pp. 5:1-5:6, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2019)
https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.PLATEAU.2018.5

Abstract

Rust is a low-level programming language known for its unique approach to memory-safe systems programming and for its steep learning curve. To understand what makes Rust difficult to adopt, we surveyed the top Reddit and Hacker News posts and comments about Rust; from these online discussions, we identified three hypotheses about Rust's barriers to adoption. We found that certain key features, idioms, and integration patterns were not easily accessible to new users.

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Human-centered computing → Human computer interaction (HCI)
Keywords
  • rust
  • programming language usability

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References

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