The Debate Over Explicit vs Implicit Handles in Rust Programming
By
emschwartz
If you only eat one bagel today, this is the bagel.
Summary
This article discusses the ongoing debate in Rust programming about whether developers should explicitly invoke handle/clone operations for reference-counted values. The author examines both sides: Dioxus argues against explicit handles for high-level GUI applications where such calls are considered 'pure noise,' while acknowledging that for many applications, explicit handles are crucial for performance, memory usage, and correctness. The piece explores how to reconcile these opposing viewpoints in Rust development.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledFor the kind of high-level GUI applications they are building, having to call cx.handle() to clone a ref-counted value is pure noise.
For a lot of Rust apps, even cloning a string or a vector is no big deal.
For a lot of applications, the answer is definitely yes – knowing where handles are created can impact performance, memory usage, and even correctness.
This whole 'Ergonomic RC' work was originally proposed by Dioxus and their answer is simple: definitely not.
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