Ive been using Newsboat since before it was called Newsboat, when it was called Newsbeuter. Newsboat does have some oddities in its config and open issues that still havent been resolved (I suspect due to the rewrite) so this alternative does make me curious to try something thats a fresh start.
I abandoned newsboat the day it introduced the first Rust dependency and switched to the Android app Feeder.
Some just prefer simple and minimalist software for their daily life, and there's no place for the Rust ecosystem there. For this reason projects like dwm, st, dmenu, bspwm, sxcs, sxhkd, nsxiv, xmenu, xplugd, fzy, nnn, xbanish, scdoc and many others will never be rewritten in Rust or adopted by users who strive for simplicity rather than colorful terminal output. memory safety is just not worth it.
Judging by this list [0] even Python or Go have more chances to align with the philosophy that encourages building simple yet functional things. And I hope this trend of fresh starts continues.
Not sure I'm getting your point. Somehow Rust forces you to have colorful terminal output? Rust is high overhead? You can't strive for simplicity and write in Rust?
Sure it's a bit silly to rewrite a nice simple tool for because it's the new fad. However if writing a new simple tool I'd certainly consider Rust.
How is Rust incompatible with aligning with the philosophy that encourages building simple yet functional things?
This was more of a sarcastic reference to https://github.com/mTvare6/hello-world.rs But I don't think Rust fits in here: https://suckless.org/philosophy/
> How is Rust incompatible with aligning with the philosophy that encourages building simple yet functional things?
I would say it attracts different kind of developers that in turn make respective design choices, and I believe Rust, its syntax, package management ecosystem and community reflect that. Can you write simple system tools in JavaScript or brainfuck (not trying to compare here)? Sure, but the thinking process, design decisions, approaches would be drastically different compared to what I'd consider good and elegant code.
ANSI C is probably the best balance you can get between product complexity, coding complexity and usability of the output (which again, has to be simple: writing something like Kubernetes in C is probably not the best idea, hence it was implemented in a more suitable language). Though there are some very good and complex products, like the Linux kernel, Redis or Varnish. All of them are very modular, as complex products should be.
Just by having a musl library and tcc [0] you can get a lot done. I'd prefer that over complexity that Rust toolchain involves and crates ecosystem mess.