Farewell, Rust for web

Title and Scope of the Article

• Several commenters note the original title was misleading; adding “for web” makes it clear this is about Rust in web development, not Rust generally or Rust+WASM.
• Some readers initially thought it might mean Rust dropping WebAssembly support.

Rust vs JS/TS for Web

• Many agree Rust is ill‑suited for typical web UX/frontends compared to JS/TS, which has hot reload, mature tooling, and huge ecosystem.
• For most CRUD or content sites, people see Rust as needless complexity versus TypeScript/React, Angular, etc.
• Some say using Rust for UI feels like re‑implementing a runtime just to get a button, and that higher‑level, GC’d languages fit UI better.

Type Systems, Errors, and Ergonomics

• Commenters sympathize with the article’s complaint about long chains of Result handling, .ok_or, .map_err, and custom error enums.
• Others push back: the explicit error handling is exactly what prevents subtle production bugs, especially in systems where mistakes are costly.
• There’s debate over how much Rust’s strictness is missed when moving to TS, and whether TS enums and never approach can compete with Rust’s pattern matching.

Rust Web Ecosystem, ORMs, and WASM

• Backend Rust fans cite Axum, async runtimes, and ORMs like Diesel or SeaORM as mature enough for serious applications, especially with strong type‑safe SQL.
• sqlx vs SeaORM is debated: sqlx leans on literal SQL and intentionally makes dynamic queries harder; SeaORM provides a more ergonomic query builder.
• WASM gets mixed reactions: some see Rust→WASM as powerful for performance‑critical modules; others report large binaries, cold‑start costs, and awkward DOM interop.

Dependency Creep and Standard Library Philosophy

• Many lament dependency explosion in both Rust and Node: small features pull in large graphs of crates/packages and security worries.
• Go is repeatedly praised for a large, stable standard library and backwards‑compatibility promises; Rust is praised for agility but criticized for pushing too much into third‑party crates.
• Broader debate arises about curated ecosystems (e.g., Go stdlib, distros) versus fast‑moving package managers and supply‑chain risk.

Where Rust Fits Best

• Strong consensus that Rust excels in systems‑level work, infrastructure, high‑reliability backends, and non‑trivial concurrent logic.
• For ordinary web apps and blogs, many argue TypeScript, Go, C#, Elixir, or similar are simpler and more productive, unless bugs are extremely expensive.