let thread : &'static Rust = "The Rust Thread".into()

Oh, I just think I picked the wrong library to use! I think it's just meant for internal use. But I like the idea of Starlark and I really couldn't find many alternatives I liked.

If you're trying to embed a DSL into a build tool then it looks very smart. But it's a real specific thing and looks to be explicitly done so the implementor for the target DSL can embed lots of their own code into it if desired, which is cool but again - tricky.

Hmmm... I think it's more like Rust is not the right language to use Starlark with- or even to do the thing I want to do.

I'm basically writing a small package manager, where packages are recipes. So a sandboxable/DSL-y language seems like a good idea. But really I really don't need fearless concurrency, not having a GC, or superstrict type-checking. I'm definitely, as always, enjoying how pleasant some things in Rust are (learning thiserror and color-eyre, from blessed.rs) but if I liked Go, I think I'd got this done much much faster. Or if there were reasonable ways to sandbox Python. Or if I some day decide to write JS/TS...

Sounds like a reasonable summary. Maybe pick something else to learn. Though being “non trivial” gets you into the real nitty gritty faster it’s always a trade off to getting progress.

Experts often forget the early days when they weren’t cutting teeth on the stuff that’s much simpler to them now

Oh, actually I got it working. Luckily the tests are quite comprehensive, so I just had to do the "the tests are the docs" ("the docs are the docs" tend to be nicer, but "the code are the docs" would be worse, so I'm not complaining). My code is ugly, but I managed to get something useful working. I'm working now on setting up binary releases through GitHub actions, will add some documentation after that... and I might publish it in a few places to see if anyone is interested.

What resources do experienced programmers who have programmed in rust used in the beginning?

I have gone through the rust book 4 or 5 times since 2016 and lose interest soon and forget all about it. Usually I give up after 3 chapters. The last attempt was a bit better with me going upto chapter 10.

The low level is not a problem. I have programmed professionally in C++ 20 years ago. The material just doesn't seem that engaging to me.

I have a hard time going through videos for learning new stuff.

I don't do videos either. I've eyed a couple of Rust books- "The Rust Programming Language, 2nd Edition" (with Steve Klabnik as an author) and "Programming Rust, 2nd Edition" are both on O'Reilly. I've read more of the first, though.

But my learning is based on programming. I think you need to jump into a project of the right size to learn, really.

(If you install some software by fetching binaries from the Internet, then I have a project that could be interesting. It's just 350 lines of code right now. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.)

Shot in the dark, but anyone know of a nice alternative to https://github.com/matklad/xshell ?

The author has some existential doubts ( https://github.com/matklad/xshell/pull/84#issuecomment-2025567452 ).

We're exploring alternatives at work, but it's a real hairy problem.

(I think someone who solves it would become rich and famous [at least in Rust land].)