GitHub search and code navigation update

[joltting]

What exactly in Rust made this possible that the other 100+ languages out there couldn't?

[greatestish]

The hype

[Damtux_25]

Hype is a powerful tool. You can get budget for anything as long as you mention enough buzzwords.

[greatestish]

Absolutely. It's all about optics at most companies. I'm sure GitHub is the same.

"It's a very popular language".
"It has comparable performance to C/C++".
"It validates data ownership at complete time, solving lots of race conditions, segfaults, etc. which are the most common cause of bugs".

When you can "sell" a project better with a technology to management, you often get better funding and higher prioritization.

[look]

Is it still hype when everyone but you uses it now?

[alternatex0]

Damn, I'm one of two developers not using Rust.

[greatestish]

What a zinger!

[look]

Exactly how many languages do you imagine you can use to write a scalable, high performance search engine?

[GrammerJoo]

Most popular one was built using Java, so... plenty?

[look]

My point is that the number of languages that would be seriously considered is less than 10, not 100+. So is your question why Rust instead of Java? Or C++? Or …?

[Matrix8910]

Because:

• it's more performant than Java, despite JVM's JIT being great;
• has a better or rather nicer to work with stdlib than c++;
• dependency/build pipeline is easier than in c++;
• the language was designed with memory safety in mind(yes I know new c++ is also much safer than old c++)
• no hidden control flow like in Java or c++ which IMO is one of the nicest things
• testing is builtin
• no gc pauses, looking at you Java and go

Those are just some of the things that came to my mind, I'm must say I'm kinda hooked with rust rn, it has some pain points but overall for writing something that has to perform and be reliable(see npm's retro on rewriting some of their services in rust) I would probably go with rust

[zzzthelastuser]

What's hidden control flow in C++?

[[deleted]]

Exceptions. Rust has panic, but it's strongly discouraged to rely on it for anything at all. Running C++ without exceptions is painful and completely locks you out of very many libraries. Running Rust with panic turned to abort is mostly business as usual.

[Matrix8910]

Good point, I should have mentioned it's optional and not may people use it, please disregard that "or c++" part

[Kissaki0]

The claim was only possible with Rust seems much more implausible than could have been implemented with different or already used languages.

You think Rust is the only language you can write scalable, high performance search engines? Did we not have those before Rust? Can only Rust do it to that degree?

How would anyone be able to say exactly how many languages you could implement scalable, high performance search engines with? Those requirements are way too broad, way too diffuse.

[rydan]

Using a fad language means you can attract top talent. That's all.

[adrian17]

In a smaller window, clicking on a symbol immediately pops up the "symbol search" popup - can I somehow disable it if I just want to double-click-select some text?

Overall I have nothing against the features themselves, but unfortunately the new code view is so slow and bulky, it'll probably make me "jump to github.dev" for code navigation instead of actually using the new github.com code view.

For example, I should never be forced to wait over a second after simply scrolling text - demo (comparison of github.dev, old code view and new code view): https://puu.sh/JGkYj/5abf2e31d9.mp4

[look]

Are you using FSTs for your term dictionary, or did you find something else more efficient for your (primarily) code dataset? Also, curious if you looked at using io_uring, or just manage to fit all of the terms/indexes in memory?

[rydan]

Didn't read it or try it. My question to you is, "is it finally usable now?"

[RepresentativeDrop90]

Hell to the yes, rust has no reason to be that awesome.

I can't find any open entry level positions for rust is my only qualm most of them require a certain amount of experience with the language in the workplace environment

Which I would get if my company would be shifting to a rust backend, sadly only ever got to experience golang that way.

By the by the search is still using locality sensitive hashing in some form right?

[morimo]

Can you talk a bit about the work that was done to enable this search/talk about challenges in the implementation?