Rust Programming Language RustFest Barcelona 2019, 26 Nov 2019

Previous Meeting Next Meeting

⏯

youtube image

►

From YouTube: RustFest Barcelona - Brian Anderson & Aimee Zhu: Rust in China

Description

Rust in China is a different thing than Rust here. It’s almost unimaginable. This is a field report from inside a Chinese software company building on Rust.

https://barcelona.rustfest.eu/sessions/rust-in-china

A

Brian: thank you.. This is a talk about what's going on in china,, at least with respect to rust.

A

Here we have a link to the presentation, materials.

A

You might want to go check out that link..

A

We have far more content than we will fit into this talk and we are going to go really.

A

Fast., if you want to follow up on any of the material, there's lots of links that you can click on.

A

My name is brian,. I have been doing rust since 2010.

A

I used to work at mozilla where I was on the core team. Before there was a core team and.

A

Right now, I work at pingcap,, a chinese company that builds a distributed database in rust.

A

And go. aimee: hi,, I'm aimee again.

B

Our team is building the permissionless blockchain network.

B

Also, I created a blockchain monthly newsletter earlier this year and we are also organised.

B

Rustcon asia, this year in april, and it's the first rust conference in china.

B

Brian: thanks, aimee.

A

Okay,, so here is the thesis of this talk.

A

Rust is not a success in china..

A

It's a huge bummer.. That's not to say that rust is a failure in china,, but the adoption is pretty low, lower.

A

Than you might expect, and awareness is also low among engineers.

A

All right, here is what we are going to talk about a bit.

A

We are going to show you some of the production users,, of which there are some that you will.

A

Know in china and some of what they are doing and some of the interesting contributions.

A

They are making to the rust community..

A

We will talk about the obstacles that rust is facing toward adoption in china.

A

Then we will highlight some of the accomplishments of the rust community in china and finally,.

A

A little bit about the future of rust and some of the potential solutions to rust's.

A

Obstacles in china.

A

during this talk, I will probably make some generalisations of the form like: china being.

A

Like this, we'd be like this., I know that's kind of risky and horrible..

A

I don't like a generalisation, but it's a useful rhetorical. Device.

A

I hope I don't offend anybody.

A

This patronising slide is to reinforce and remind you how important the chinese market.

A

Is. china is huge., there are a lot of people in china..

A

This is a vacation slide, me and alex from the core team.

A

We visited china in 2017.

A

The guy in the middle there is a guy named tenex from pingcap, the company that I work.

A

For now, and that company was also the first rust production user in china.

A

Not really a vacation; that was work.

A

okay, now aimee is going to tell you a little bit about what is going on in the world of.

A

Chinese rust production, users.

B

Aimee:, as you can see, from the logos, here, alibaba, baidu,, very big companies in china,.

B

They have different projects.

B

one interesting project in alibaba. Is they generate target image-focused advertisements.

B

But also they are doing secure computing research and that is they use rust as a cloud service.

B

Layer. there are a lot of some other very popular apps, like bilibili,, a video platform, pingcap.

B

Database company,, and also the two chinese characters, in china. They use rust for the.

B

Search engine and also some other blockchain companies; imtoken, on the very left,. That's.

B

A blockchain wallet- and that is where I was working at and sparkpool.

B

Is the biggest mining pool.

B

most projects are open. Source.. You can check the github for all the stuff here.

B

And nervos,, where I work at,, they have a virtual machine and ckb is a base layer of the blockchain.

B

Muta is another framework for building other blockchains and pingcap,, where brian works,.

B

They have a lot of web hosts with the distributed, secure, database, and that's all from my side.

B

Brian: okay,, so aimee showed you that slide of prominent rust production users in china.

A

I want to emphasise that that is all of the rust production users in china, and we kind.

A

Of scoured the internet for them last night.

A

Some of those are really prominent companies, and it's really exciting that they are using.

A

Rust,, but they are mostly using them. The big companies on that slide are mostly using.

A

Them in a fairly small way,, but at least there's that awareness in those companies.

A

Those big companies like alibaba are going to drive it.

A

Unfortunately,, I can't really talk about this without at least acknowledging the great firewall.

A

You've probably heard of the great firewall.

A

it impacts everything in china.

A

Your life is digital these days and the great firewall just reaches into that digital life.

A

In every conceivable way.

A

You've surely heard about the great firewall and what it does,, but unless you've actually.

A

Been in mainland china, you probably don't really feel it in your bones,. What the gfw.

A

Does to you., I can't really tell you what the gfw actually is, because it's a very complex thing, but essentially.

A

There is an internet in china and it works great.

A

And there is the internet that we all know outside of china, and it is utterly broken.

A

Almost every service that I use personally, as soon as I enter china, just stops. Working.

A

The big impact that this has it has many impacts on rust engineers in china,, but the.

A

Really big, horrible one that it has is that the rust toolset does not work in china.

A

Rustup and cargo, the things that you take for granted and everybody loves, that makes.

A

Rust so easy to use,. They literally don't work in china.

A

If you go to the website and follow the instructions that we give everybody like,, this is how.

A

You use rust. It honestly is not going to work for your newbie rust user. That is excitedly.

A

Trying to onboard themselves to rust., what's probably going to happen, is that either rustup is going to fail to download a toolchain.

A

From the rust distribution servers or that cargo will fail to download packages from.

A

Crates.Io., obviously this is a really,, really horrible story and your first experience with rust.

A

Is going to be a disaster if you are in china.

A

Fortunately,, the rust community in china is doing the best they can and the university.

A

Of science and technology of china has a user group there that has created mirrors for crates.io.

A

And mirrors for rustup,. So if you know what to do- and you know the right people and they.

A

Hand you the secret documents, then you can figure out how to use rust in china,, but in.

A

A lot of ways, the rust community in china is like a secret society.

A

You can't go to the rust website and figure out how to be inducted into the rust community.

A

You've got to have somebody tell you how to use rust and where to find the other people.

A

That use rust, and another reason why the community is like a secret society is because.

A

Of the way communities are organised and communicate in china.

A

Again,, like the gfw,, you have probably heard of wechat, which is the social media app in.

A

China,, but it's much more than that,, it's basically the tool that runs your life in.

A

China., you use it for instant messaging, for group chats, to make almost all your payments in.

A

China- and you even use it to order your food at the restaurant.

A

Everything happens through wechat, and this has two really big, negative consequences.

A

For organising a community in china., the first is that wechat groups are private and invitation only,. So again you go to the.

A

Rust website and as a chinese user, you try to figure out:. Where do I go? Get help?.

A

You probably see that you are ushered towards discord or something like that, and maybe you.

A

Go there and it doesn't work..

A

Certainly you go to discord and don't find anybody that speaks chinese.

A

What you really need to do to get help is again to find somebody else who is already.

A

Part of the rust community and have them tell you the secret that: oh,. You need to be invited.

A

To this wechat group and then you can get help.

A

The second way that wechat, really negatively impacts adoption in china is that wechat groups.

A

Are limited to 500 people,, so in a real practical sense, this means that the chinese community.

A

For rust is made of 500 people.

A

In practice, we have attentive moderators and when one room fills up, they will create.

A

Rust group 2, 3, 4,, but this just creates disjointed rust communities of people and.

A

It's a huge problem..

A

I would like to say something about engineering culture,, but my ideas. There are vague and.

A

I don't really have a lot of time,, but again I will be around,. You can ask me questions.

A

Later., I am going to move on.

A

It feels like something went wrong in china with rust adoption and that we could have.

A

A

I can say more about this,, but in the interests of time I need to move on to the next part.

A

Where we talk about the good things that are happening in rust.

A

So aimee is going to talk a little bit about what the rust community is doing. That is so.

A

Great. aimee:, thank you. Again.

B

There are many problems already like officialdom, or whatever can also bar the local chinese.

B

Team,, but it's fun., we also have a local amenity who are doing a lot of effort to make the community grow.

B

I would like to highlight alex zhang and mike tang.

B

Alex even wrote a book about rust, programming, mike runs almost all the rust groups in china.

B

And they also run rust.cc, which is all about the programming language and they use that.

B

Forum to share all the things with the community.

B

They also organise a team who translate rust language official website to chinese.

B

Thanks for all the members here- and we also organised the rustcon asia, this year,, the.

B

First, in china,, we had one day of keynote talks and two full days of workshops with.

B

About 300 attendees there.

B

It was a great time and we are also asking for support for the next conference.

B

Brian. brian: thank you, aimee.

A

I want to emphasise that aimee organised that entire conference, this year, and it really.

A

A

Okay,, so in the last minute here I want to.

A

Talk a little bit about some of those problems and the solutions and what we expect to see.

A

In the future., like I said,, it's tempting to believe that somebody over here screwed up when we see.

A

The low adoption and awareness of rust in china,, but the more that I talk to engineers.

A

And I experience the rust community in china, the more I realise that every individual local.

A

Community is unique and has its own unique problems, and it's kind of impossible for.

A

Me to come in and say: well, you shouldn't be using wechat, because the fact of the matter.

A

Is wechat is where the people are in china and you've going to where the people are,.

A

So wechat, for example, poses a lot of problems to community building, but also you've got.

A

To be on wechat, because that's where people expect you to be.

A

So it's really up to the chinese rust community to figure out those kind of communication.

A

And organisational issues.

A

I expect that rust adoption in china will continue to be led by a few companies and,.

A

As we see, the companies like alibaba and baidu, use rust more and more, they will sort.

A

Of build confidence in the engineers in china that rust is a language worth learning and.

A

Worth adopting., I really would love for somebody to step up and fix cargo and rustup, and this is the one.

A

Big technical thing that is really on the team to fix.

A

This involves infrastructure issues,, it involves legal issues, and somebody really has to do.

A

Hard work to make that happen,, but in order for people to use your product, the product.

A

Has got to work.

A

all right,, I think I'm going to wrap up now.

A

Again, link is on the slides.

A

We have much more that we can possibly talk about rust in china..

A

If you want to talk to us,, come and find us in the hallway track.

A

We will take no questions right now because we are running late.

A

Please enjoy your lunch.