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Strategy Pattern in Rust (programming.dev)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hey there, I'm currently learning Rust (coming from object-oriented and also to some degree functional languages like Kotlin) and have some trouble how to design my software in a Rust-like way. I'm hoping someone could help me out with an explanation here :-)

I just started reading the book in order to get an overview of the language as well.

In OOP languages, I frequently use design patterns such as the Strategy pattern to model interchangeable pieces of logic.

How do I model this in Rust?

My current approach would be to define a trait and write different implementations of it. I would then pass around a boxed trait object (Box<dyn MyTrait>). I often find myself trying to combine this with some poor man's manual dependency injection.

This approach feels very object oriented and not native to the language. Would this be the recommended way of doing things or is there a better approach to take in Rust?

Thanks in advance!

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That makes sense, thanks again! I think dynamic dispatch is not as much of a performance issue in my case, yet you're totally right not to waste resources that aren't actually needed. Keeping things on the stack if possible is also a good thing.

I'll definitely need to read more about Rusts type system but your explanation was already very helpful! I think this might be why my initial approach felt unnatural - it works but is quite cumbersome and with generics there seems to be a more elegant approach.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

Yeah the performance differences don't matter in most cases. Rust makes it tempting to optimize everything because the language is explicit about runtime representations. But that doesn't mean that optimizing is the best use of your time.