Struct show_notes::interview::rbr_2017::arun_kulshreshthra::Transcript

pub struct Transcript;

Arun Kulshreshtha

Chris: Hi, can you tell us your name and where you work and how you got into Rust?

Arun: Sure. My name is Arun Kolshreshthra. I’m a software engineer at Facebook, and that’s actually how I got into Rust. Um, when I joined Facebook, fresh out of college, um, there was a new Rust project - a new Mercurial server being written in Rust there. I joined Facebook’s source control team and have been working on that server ever since the middle of last year. It’s been really fun, and I’ve been learning a lot about the language.

Chris: Sweet! Mercurial. No one knows this, probably, other than close friends of mine, but I really wish Mercurial had won instead of Git. So, I was really excited to see people pushing on that. Uh, how long - you said about a year and a half that you’ve been writing Rust?

Arun: Yeah, that’s about right.

Chris: What has been the best or most enjoyable part of that so far?

Arun: Well, what I’ve really enjoyed is being able to write systems programming, like, just doing systems programming, in a language that has things like algebraic data types and other features from the functional programming world. I myself am coming from a mixed background where I both did a lot of systems programming and a lot of functional programming in languages like Haskell in college, and the functional programming stuff really appealed to me, and I always wish C and C+ + had those features, so it’s really great getting to use them every day in my systems work.

Chris: That’s awesome. So, I know that’s an open source code base - how big is it now?

Arun: How big is the Mononoke project, which is the uh, source control server? I’m not actually sure what the actual lines of code are because I don’t keep up with our git hub repo from day to day, um, not everything is open source unfortunately, but a good chunk of it - the majority of it - is on Github. I’d say, you know, definitely several thousand lines, probably tens of thousands of lines, but don’t quote me on that, because I don’t actually know. But if you search on Github you’ll find the repo and you can find out.

Chris: What, if any, have been pain points for you along the way with Rust?

Arun: So the biggest pain point has probably been, like, Facebook is definitely a C+ + shop, as far as the back end is concerned, so all of the existing libraries and APIs are all designed with C+ + in mind. One of my jobs has been to write bindings to those libraries from Rust, and unfortunately, while the binding situation in Rust is actually not bad, with tools like bindgen to help automatically generate those bindings, it turns out when you’re using really advanced C+ + features, like C+ + 14, and maybe even C+ + 17 features - because Facebook always has to be on the bleeding edge after all - bindgen falls over, and you find yourself writing all these wrappers and shims to get everything to work, and that is a bit of a pain. I wish I didn’t have to do that on a near daily basis, but that is my life right now. But, the pain’s worth it to get to use Rust.

Chris: That’s, that’s fair, I think! Uh, is there anything else - any particular standouts - of your time so far here at Rust Belt Rust, or that you’re looking forward to?

Arun: Just interacting with the community members here at Rust Belt Rust has been amazing. Uh, I was also at Rust Conf for earlier this year, and I found that the community is extremely approachable and welcoming. I was really worried, like, I’m a new grad; I barely have any industry experience. Hell, I don’t even know what I’m talking about some of the time. Like, will I fit in? But, like, I can talk to, like, some of the maintainers of, like, key crates, you know? They’ll have a technical conversation with me and, like, give me pointers and stuff, and that’s really awesome.

Chris: Awesome. Thanks so much for your time, Arun.

Arun: Yeah, thank you!