Looking back, is there anything that you would have done differently? I find that half or more of the rewrites that I have dealt with have been driven by all the wrong motivations. You get inevitable turnover and at some point people dislike code that they didn't write themselves and push for a rewrite, maybe changing the stack to something trendy, justifying it with thin arguments. Once the rewrite starts the company ends up treading water for years while incurring a ton of costs. For me, I think only 1 rewrite that I was part of was a good decision in my 15 years in tech. If I could go back in time, I think I would kill all rewrite discussions the moment that someone first whispers the idea.
How did you guys enjoy switching to Rust? I assume the safety and performance benefits for the trading system are a huge plus (didn't Kraken trading go down for an entire week a few years ago?). Did you also rewrite the webapp backend in Rust as well? How has staffing and budgeting been affected? I would assume that the supply of Rust developers is much lower unless you train them in house. Rust sounds fun, but I can't imagine trying to justify a rewrite of a legacy system, a major tech stack change, and training/building a new team all at the same time.
Sorry for the onslaught on questions. The "rewrite it in rust" fever has spread to my work and I'm fighting myself on how to respond.
Looking back, is there anything that you would have done differently? I find that half or more of the rewrites that I have dealt with have been driven by all the wrong motivations. You get inevitable turnover and at some point people dislike code that they didn't write themselves and push for a rewrite, maybe changing the stack to something trendy, justifying it with thin arguments. Once the rewrite starts the company ends up treading water for years while incurring a ton of costs. For me, I think only 1 rewrite that I was part of was a good decision in my 15 years in tech. If I could go back in time, I think I would kill all rewrite discussions the moment that someone first whispers the idea.
How did you guys enjoy switching to Rust? I assume the safety and performance benefits for the trading system are a huge plus (didn't Kraken trading go down for an entire week a few years ago?). Did you also rewrite the webapp backend in Rust as well? How has staffing and budgeting been affected? I would assume that the supply of Rust developers is much lower unless you train them in house. Rust sounds fun, but I can't imagine trying to justify a rewrite of a legacy system, a major tech stack change, and training/building a new team all at the same time.
Sorry for the onslaught on questions. The "rewrite it in rust" fever has spread to my work and I'm fighting myself on how to respond.