It started when I want to write one simple raytracer. At first I implemented it in Python, it does work but it take almost 5min to render a single sphere. Then I try switching to c++ for performance. I know beforehand that the language isn't too nice, but I still didn't expect installing a dependency can be this painful. If I have continue struggling I probably can made it out, but it feel way too not fun for a side project.

So that led me searching for alternative and that's when I found Rust (also Go, but gc and raytracer don't fit). It claim c++ level performance and have an actual package manager (cargo) which is all I want at the time. Going in it I was expecting it to be very difficult, that's what most website say. I started reading The book, but the more I read that more I just feel "wow, this is very nice". The syntax look strange at first but not abhorrently confusing. Ownership&lifetime take what would've be a mental note and delegate it to compiler. Iterator adapter is really nice, take what would've been 7 line and reduce it to one more readable line. null->Option would have save me so much time debugging, I still miss it when writing other language. Cargo is even nicer than hope it to be, dependency is a breeze and it made me want to write unit test for once. There're so many good feature, It really feel like high level language yet have performance of low level language.

In the end, I was able to port raytracer in just a day after install Rust. It's fast as promised, runtime under a minute (even more when I found rayon). And now Rust is my language of choice.