Let's Get This Project Started

leap / / Written by Daniel Samson

Are we web yet? Em .... Well ... almost? The rust community has enough to make it easy to craft a microservice but crafting a fully featured web application is quite a different experience.

Compared to other programming languages, Rust is takes a little longer to get a web application off the ground. The developer experience across different crates could be more consistent. Some crates are not yet mature. Some crates do not keep up-to-date with new features. While the number of crates are many and having choice is good, most web developers do not have the time to spend on selecting the best crates. They want something close to the finish product without too much fuss.

Is rust the right language for the web?

The short answer yes, because the performance gains are amazing but the transition to rust is not easy.

As a hygienic language, the compiler is very strict. The compiler knows best and when rust challenges your assumptions it can be hard to swallow your pride. All that time you have spent learning Object Oriented Design (OOD) goes right out the window, as rust teaches you to compose your data objects instead of relying on inheritance. You find yourself writing code that is easy to read. You learn to care about which parts of your code can modify the values you are using. Finally, your code compiles and you are rewarded with something that performs better than anything you have ever created before. It at this point you realise the potential of the rust language.

Now is the time to take a Leap

Rust looks and feels a lot like TypeScript. Learn its quirks takes a little time investment. It out performs the alternatives such as NodeJS, Go, Java. But it is missing the killer framework that gives you a fully working web application out of the box.

So I have decided to package a framework that helps any developer leap over the cost of starting a project in rust and keep the maintenance cost low.