Criticism is just so much easier than constructive arguments. That's why it's rampant in communities, even HN. And controversial subjects (Bitcoin, health, fo

Criticism is just so much easier than constructive arguments. That's why it's rampant in communities, even HN. And controversial subjects (Bitcoin, health, food, Javascript) will magnify the problem. It's easy to find fault in C/C++. It's easy to parrot the Rust marketing. It's not so easy to actually have spent the time to learn and use Rust, let alone articulate the subtle ways that its design, taken as a whole, is better than alternatives. Building those constructive arguments is _hard_. I remember reading an article about error handling. It had to have been at least 10 pages worth of content, covering the history of error handling throughout all the old and modern languages, and using examples for where each fails or succeeds. It culminates, more or less, in explaining exactly why the error handling of languages like Rust outperforms in the field of systems programming. (NOTE: The author of that article was actually arguing for the error system used in the language they developed for their OS, IIRC. But Rust was pretty darn close to the ideal the author was going for, and they pointed out as much.) My point is that it took 10+ pages to make a solid argument for _just_ error handling. Not many people have the experience, wisdom, time, and willingness to write even a fraction of such insightful content in a comment on HN. That said, well written, balanced comments still generally float to the top in even controversial HN threads. EDIT: I would also like to point out something specifically in response to "I've seen comments to the effect that anyone writing in C or C++ today is literally acting with reckless indifference to life and safety." There is a tremendous amount of pent up anger in the programming community against C/C++. The language should have been put our to pasture a _long_ time ago. Rust is the first language which has a real chance to displace it. So it's no wonder that a lot of us are willing to just burn C/C++ to the ground and jump ship. Not to mention that as programmers we may be quickly approaching a time when security bugs become a governmental issue, and the _last_ thing we want is the government mandating how we write code. So it is in everyone's interest if we self regulate. Again, that would explain why everyone is kinda jumpy about C and security bugs.