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Not only did the user you replied to not mention Rust, as far as I can tell they are not an active Rust user. The Rust community has a clear policy against lang

Not only did the user you replied to not mention Rust, as far as I can tell they are not an active Rust user. The Rust community has a clear policy against language zealotry. Your claim that "proponents [of Rust] [are] talking smack about everything else all the time" wants for evidence.

Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
It's difficult to search for, since usually such comments end up in threads that aren't about Rust, criticizing the actual topic for not using Rust. I guess I'll have to write down whenever I see this for the next time someone complains about my complaint. I do have one link handy, since I participated in this thread myself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11620962 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11620962
- tatterdemalion 10y ago
  You're the person who brought up Rust in that thread. The user 'mokus', which is a handle I do not recognize from the Rust community, advocates using 'memory safe languages' over C. So apparently you have a habit of projecting support for Rust on anyone who criticizes C?
  - Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
    This is very quickly devolving into a stupid flamewar, assuming it isn't already there. This is a thread about Rust error messages. When someone describes useful C warnings messages and someone follows up with criticism for C even making situations where those warnings are possible in such a thread, it's pretty reasonable to make the connection. What's your problem, dude?
    - oldmanjay 10y ago
      I don't think the issue was that you made a connection to Rust. The issue seems to be that you used it as an excuse to rant about a tangent with an aggressive tone in article that will attract proponents of the target of your rant. In other words, it didn't devolve into a flamewar, because that's where you started it out.
    - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
      Drew, you're actually wrong here. Safe systems languages predate Rust by quite a while, most of them being in the Wirth family (Modula, Oberon, etc.). Given that here at HN, we have a large constituency of Lisp Hackers and Unix Haters (as in the handbook), if somebody talks about how C is junk, and how safe systems languages should be used instead (esp. if that person is pjmlp, nickpsecurity, or lispm), they are likely referring to those, not Rust. So not a reasonable connection to make, if you know a bit more of the context. I certainly don't blame you for making the jump, but I seem to be in the minority.
      - nickpsecurity 10y ago
        Great analysis. The thread he links actually corroborates it, too. I've even found a few more safer, system languages since then that may be featured in future lists or threads. To be fair to me, though, note that I also heavily promote memory-safe C (eg Softbound, SAFEcode), memory-safe UNIX (CheriBSD, SVA-OS), and user-mode UNIX (eg seperation kernels, GenodeOS) to help UNIX/C users reduce serious problems they might encounter. I just default on countering root causes of problems as first resort. ;)
        qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        I didn't know that about you. However, I would say that you probably fall under UNIX-Hater nonetheless. Not that that is a bad thing, it's merely a statement about your opinions and ideals. I will totally have to check out some of those project now. Although I do wonder why Cyclone, the project that inspired Rust, wasn't on your list for memory-safe C.
        nickpsecurity 10y ago
        Oh yeah, I've linked to original and ESR's interpretation of UNIX Hater Handbook. Like I said, great analysis minus that one aspect of my posts here. :) Far as recommendations, putting my name and those terms into Google gives me six hits on HN where I recommend them both. In several, I push alternatives like microkernels, SPARK, and Rust plus those if person stays with C. In reply to ZeroTier developer, I reference Code-Pointer Integrity too while pointing out he's less safe with C++ because he can't use these C features. Ironic. "Although I do wonder why Cyclone, the project that inspired Rust, wasn't on your list for memory-safe C." I get 47 hits on that as I give Morissett et al's work plenty credit. Often when someone says Rust did the dynamic safety first where I counter they got it from Cyclone. Reason I don't push Cyclone so much is it isn't actively developed any more like most safer C's. C people just ignore them. Others included Safe-C, Clay, and Vault languages although I don't think all of them were OSS'd. Many non-C languages also compiled to C to get portability and performance benefits while app gets type-checked or other checks (eg bounds). Hardly any take-up there either. At this point, I just recommend them putting work into compiler extensions that make C safer with reasonable performance hits. SAFEcode already in LLVM, too.
    - tatterdemalion 10y ago
      I don't want this to be either a flamewar or stupid. The Rust community has a strong commitment to be welcoming and inclusive, and this means we try very hard to discourage bashing other languages (who could want to join a community that is constantly talking trash about the language they work in every day?). Despite this, a meme has been spreading, mainly among C programmers, that the Rust community does go around bashing other languages. This meme harms the work our community is doing and is not supported by evidence. Also, I find the criticism of C you responded to quite valid, not "talking smack." It is a problem with C that it has several basic functions which are deprecated for security issues. This is a problem that C has much more than most other languages.

Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago

It's difficult to search for, since usually such comments end up in threads that aren't about Rust, criticizing the actual topic for not using Rust. I guess I'll have to write down whenever I see this for the next time someone complains about my complaint. I do have one link handy, since I participated in this thread myself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11620962 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11620962

tatterdemalion 10y ago
You're the person who brought up Rust in that thread. The user 'mokus', which is a handle I do not recognize from the Rust community, advocates using 'memory safe languages' over C. So apparently you have a habit of projecting support for Rust on anyone who criticizes C?
- Sir_Cmpwn 10y ago
  This is very quickly devolving into a stupid flamewar, assuming it isn't already there. This is a thread about Rust error messages. When someone describes useful C warnings messages and someone follows up with criticism for C even making situations where those warnings are possible in such a thread, it's pretty reasonable to make the connection. What's your problem, dude?
  - oldmanjay 10y ago
    I don't think the issue was that you made a connection to Rust. The issue seems to be that you used it as an excuse to rant about a tangent with an aggressive tone in article that will attract proponents of the target of your rant. In other words, it didn't devolve into a flamewar, because that's where you started it out.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    Drew, you're actually wrong here. Safe systems languages predate Rust by quite a while, most of them being in the Wirth family (Modula, Oberon, etc.). Given that here at HN, we have a large constituency of Lisp Hackers and Unix Haters (as in the handbook), if somebody talks about how C is junk, and how safe systems languages should be used instead (esp. if that person is pjmlp, nickpsecurity, or lispm), they are likely referring to those, not Rust. So not a reasonable connection to make, if you know a bit more of the context. I certainly don't blame you for making the jump, but I seem to be in the minority.
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      Great analysis. The thread he links actually corroborates it, too. I've even found a few more safer, system languages since then that may be featured in future lists or threads. To be fair to me, though, note that I also heavily promote memory-safe C (eg Softbound, SAFEcode), memory-safe UNIX (CheriBSD, SVA-OS), and user-mode UNIX (eg seperation kernels, GenodeOS) to help UNIX/C users reduce serious problems they might encounter. I just default on countering root causes of problems as first resort. ;)
      - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
        I didn't know that about you. However, I would say that you probably fall under UNIX-Hater nonetheless. Not that that is a bad thing, it's merely a statement about your opinions and ideals. I will totally have to check out some of those project now. Although I do wonder why Cyclone, the project that inspired Rust, wasn't on your list for memory-safe C.
        nickpsecurity 10y ago
        Oh yeah, I've linked to original and ESR's interpretation of UNIX Hater Handbook. Like I said, great analysis minus that one aspect of my posts here. :) Far as recommendations, putting my name and those terms into Google gives me six hits on HN where I recommend them both. In several, I push alternatives like microkernels, SPARK, and Rust plus those if person stays with C. In reply to ZeroTier developer, I reference Code-Pointer Integrity too while pointing out he's less safe with C++ because he can't use these C features. Ironic. "Although I do wonder why Cyclone, the project that inspired Rust, wasn't on your list for memory-safe C." I get 47 hits on that as I give Morissett et al's work plenty credit. Often when someone says Rust did the dynamic safety first where I counter they got it from Cyclone. Reason I don't push Cyclone so much is it isn't actively developed any more like most safer C's. C people just ignore them. Others included Safe-C, Clay, and Vault languages although I don't think all of them were OSS'd. Many non-C languages also compiled to C to get portability and performance benefits while app gets type-checked or other checks (eg bounds). Hardly any take-up there either. At this point, I just recommend them putting work into compiler extensions that make C safer with reasonable performance hits. SAFEcode already in LLVM, too.
  - tatterdemalion 10y ago
    I don't want this to be either a flamewar or stupid. The Rust community has a strong commitment to be welcoming and inclusive, and this means we try very hard to discourage bashing other languages (who could want to join a community that is constantly talking trash about the language they work in every day?). Despite this, a meme has been spreading, mainly among C programmers, that the Rust community does go around bashing other languages. This meme harms the work our community is doing and is not supported by evidence. Also, I find the criticism of C you responded to quite valid, not "talking smack." It is a problem with C that it has several basic functions which are deprecated for security issues. This is a problem that C has much more than most other languages.