rust keeps making me slower, and that's the point
rust does not let me lie to it. the borrow checker stops me at the exact moment i was about to do something i hadn't thought through. early on this felt like the language fighting me. now i think it's the closest thing i have to a senior engineer reading over my shoulder.
it also changed how i scope work. in rler i deferred deep reinforcement learning entirely and shipped honest tabular q-learning first, because i'd rather have a small correct thing than a big handwavy one. rust nudges you toward that mindset — make the states explicit, make the errors explicit, and the design follows.
i'm slower in rust. i'm also more sure of what i shipped. i'll take that trade most days.
written by dharun ashokkumar · more reflections