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> Do c/c++ for 10 years, like the author, and then you're qualified to comment about the topic. If you're new to this, try to put your time into actually learni

by catdog 9y ago

> Do c/c++ for 10 years, like the author, and then you're qualified to comment about the topic. If you're new to this, try to put your time into actually learning about these topics and not just blindly repeating other peoples opinions. Please don't say things like "c/c++ is unsafe and should not be used" without understanding it first. I don't think you need 10 years to understand enough to be qualified to comment. Like it or not people make mistakes, even the most seasoned coders do. C does its best to turn every little oversight into a potential entry in the CVE database. > And try to consider for a moment that a humongous part of the critical software in the world is written in it. It is the industry standard for all things embedded and low level. That is a valid excuse to use it but it doesn't mean that shouldn't be changed. What you see quite often is people defending using C less because of leveraging the existing ecosystem but because "it's so beautifully simple" and this "experienced coder can do it right" elitism. > This is how stupid cargo cult gets made, guys. It's easy to repeat some talking points that you found on the rust homepage or another internet forum, but doing that does not make you an enlightened programmer! > The thing is, I'm not even saying the author is wrong (I don't think he is). I'm just saying that circulating these kinds of opinion posts here and then applauding each other for being such brilliant rust fanboys is not helpful. Nobody talks specifically about rust here, it's just a new promising language which is designed to fit inside the territories where C/C++ are prevalent and seems to have some traction. Rust is simply a non-theoretical opportunity to shift to something better.

ccommsxx 9y ago
You took my post as saying "all systems code should be written in C and that should always stay that way because people don't make mistakes". However, that is not at all what I said (also see other replies). What I said was that one should not blindly make the opposite (false) reverse assumptions, which are that "code should not be written in C/C++ because they are 'unsafe'" or "all code written in 'safe' languages is 'safe'" (both for a hand-wavy definition of safe). The point that I tried to make was that if you do not have a good understanding of C++, you're probably not qualified to comment on the matter of some alternative being safer/better than it or not. And also that just blindly repeating other's opinions is not a path to understanding in this case. I realize that the linked article didn't say or do that, but my comment was clearly not directed at the author of the post, but at the community of this forum (just look around in this thread to find some of the group-think I'm referring to).
- phaylon 9y ago
  The big safety wins from Rust for me are things like the type system disallowing iterator invalidation, the type system handling resource releases, iterators making bounds checks a lot more affordable, the shared immutable/unique mutable distinction, the ability to encode that something can't keep a value somewhere accidentally, type system enforced thread safety, and others in that category. Why would I need a good understanding of C++ to consider these built-in facilities or the ones that just happen due to the type system as safer?
  - ccommsxx 9y ago
    I don't think you need a good understanding of C++ to appreciate these features per-se. Only if you want to make a statement like "X is an improvement over C++ because of these". For example, enforced const-ness/immutability, option types and automatic ressource management (RAII) are also already standard in modern/best-practice C++ code. In general I agree that there are a lot of nice languages features that rust currently has which would also be nice to have in the c-family languages.
    - phaylon 9y ago
      > I don't think you need a good understanding of C++ to appreciate these features per-se. Only if you want to make a statement like "X is an improvement over C++ because of these". What about "X encoding thread-safety through the type-system is an improvement over the C++ way" and similar? This is how I usually read these kinds of statements.

by catdog 9y ago

ccommsxx 9y ago

You took my post as saying "all systems code should be written in C and that should always stay that way because people don't make mistakes". However, that is not at all what I said (also see other replies). What I said was that one should not blindly make the opposite (false) reverse assumptions, which are that "code should not be written in C/C++ because they are 'unsafe'" or "all code written in 'safe' languages is 'safe'" (both for a hand-wavy definition of safe). The point that I tried to make was that if you do not have a good understanding of C++, you're probably not qualified to comment on the matter of some alternative being safer/better than it or not. And also that just blindly repeating other's opinions is not a path to understanding in this case. I realize that the linked article didn't say or do that, but my comment was clearly not directed at the author of the post, but at the community of this forum (just look around in this thread to find some of the group-think I'm referring to).

phaylon 9y ago
The big safety wins from Rust for me are things like the type system disallowing iterator invalidation, the type system handling resource releases, iterators making bounds checks a lot more affordable, the shared immutable/unique mutable distinction, the ability to encode that something can't keep a value somewhere accidentally, type system enforced thread safety, and others in that category. Why would I need a good understanding of C++ to consider these built-in facilities or the ones that just happen due to the type system as safer?
- ccommsxx 9y ago
  I don't think you need a good understanding of C++ to appreciate these features per-se. Only if you want to make a statement like "X is an improvement over C++ because of these". For example, enforced const-ness/immutability, option types and automatic ressource management (RAII) are also already standard in modern/best-practice C++ code. In general I agree that there are a lot of nice languages features that rust currently has which would also be nice to have in the c-family languages.
  - phaylon 9y ago
    > I don't think you need a good understanding of C++ to appreciate these features per-se. Only if you want to make a statement like "X is an improvement over C++ because of these". What about "X encoding thread-safety through the type-system is an improvement over the C++ way" and similar? This is how I usually read these kinds of statements.