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Rust also comes with a very deep standard library for I/O, path manipulation etc whereas the C++ equivalents for all of this are still surprisingly lacking even

by papaf 6y ago

Rust also comes with a very deep standard library for I/O, path manipulation etc whereas the C++ equivalents for all of this are still surprisingly lacking even in C++20 (especially on the network side). I agree with this point and cross-platform development is painful in C and C++. However, one of the reasons people use C and C++ is because of platform specific development. It turns out the platforms themselves are written in C. For example, the "very deep standard library" for Rust can't do DNS TXT queries. On Linux, I run 'man res_query' [1] and get the documentation. Notice the Synopsis, that's C/C++ and the Linux specific code I write can use that. Rust can also call these functions but there is an impedance mismatch between the safe world of standard rust and the unsafe calls to the system -- I imagine that a crate is a available to ease the pain of the 'unsigned char *answer'. I am not making this comment to belittle Rust, I actually think it is a good and safe alternative to C++. However, there is decades of system development behind the C/C++ ecosystem and coming onto a C/C++ thread (about a package manager) and calling things a "shitshow" is not going to win people over. [1] https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/res_query.3.html https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/res_query.3.html

bschwindHN 6y ago
One of the great things about Rust is you can write platform-specific code for each platform and then package it all up into one interface so anyone can trivially use it. They get the simplicity of one interface and the performance of platform-specific code. Though I haven't used it personally, it seems like the trust-dns project is one such example: https://github.com/bluejekyll/trust-dns https://github.com/bluejekyll/trust-dns
- platinumrad 6y ago
  You can do that in literally any language.
  - bschwindHN 6y ago
    Yep, but Rust makes it very easy to package and distribute libraries with Cargo, while maintaining performance on the level of C. I was mostly replying to this: > However, one of the reasons people use C and C++ is because of platform specific development. It turns out the platforms themselves are written in C.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Most languages that offer AOT toolchains can do the same.
- thechao 6y ago
  I think I know what you're trying to say: Cargo's existence means that each of the platform-specific variations can be packaged up into a single library, and that library becomes the de facto standard. It's a higher bar than "just about any language supports abstraction". It fits more into a Pythonic world-view where there's a one-size-fits-all standard library mentality.
dpc_pw 6y ago
> here is decades of system development behind the C/C++ ecosystem and coming onto a C/C++ thread (about a package manager) and calling things a "shitshow" is not going to win people over. But it is as shitshow. Pretty much everything in system programming is a shitshow. From the moment you boot up a computer, it's just continous stream of bad ideas, lack of foresight, incidental architectures, hacks, bugs and workarounds all glued together with a duct-tape. That's what system development really is. Everything we do in mainstream system computing is a shitshow. The fact that people are afraid to put any computer to handle public Internet traffic is a shitshow. It's a shitshow, everybody knows it's a shitshow and we even have whole mature industries sucking out a lot of money out of economy to deal with that shitshow. Anyone that can't see it's a shitshow can't really be "won over". They will happily live their lives being quite skilled at navigating this shitshow, and repeating stuff like "UB is not a problem", "security bugs are only problem of bad developers", "modern C++ is mostly-safe", and so on. The biggest shitshow... the meta-shitshow here, is how many people in systems development can't see it's a shitshow. They never ventured to investigate ideas from outside of the Unix/C/C++ bubble and tried to incorporate it into systems programming. And just to be clear... Rust is not completely shitshow-free, and is just a small pocket of almost-shitshow-free environment in a vast shitshow ocean.

by papaf 6y ago

bschwindHN 6y ago

One of the great things about Rust is you can write platform-specific code for each platform and then package it all up into one interface so anyone can trivially use it. They get the simplicity of one interface and the performance of platform-specific code. Though I haven't used it personally, it seems like the trust-dns project is one such example: https://github.com/bluejekyll/trust-dns https://github.com/bluejekyll/trust-dns

platinumrad 6y ago
You can do that in literally any language.
- bschwindHN 6y ago
  Yep, but Rust makes it very easy to package and distribute libraries with Cargo, while maintaining performance on the level of C. I was mostly replying to this: > However, one of the reasons people use C and C++ is because of platform specific development. It turns out the platforms themselves are written in C.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Most languages that offer AOT toolchains can do the same.
thechao 6y ago
I think I know what you're trying to say: Cargo's existence means that each of the platform-specific variations can be packaged up into a single library, and that library becomes the de facto standard. It's a higher bar than "just about any language supports abstraction". It fits more into a Pythonic world-view where there's a one-size-fits-all standard library mentality.

dpc_pw 6y ago

> here is decades of system development behind the C/C++ ecosystem and coming onto a C/C++ thread (about a package manager) and calling things a "shitshow" is not going to win people over. But it is as shitshow. Pretty much everything in system programming is a shitshow. From the moment you boot up a computer, it's just continous stream of bad ideas, lack of foresight, incidental architectures, hacks, bugs and workarounds all glued together with a duct-tape. That's what system development really is. Everything we do in mainstream system computing is a shitshow. The fact that people are afraid to put any computer to handle public Internet traffic is a shitshow. It's a shitshow, everybody knows it's a shitshow and we even have whole mature industries sucking out a lot of money out of economy to deal with that shitshow. Anyone that can't see it's a shitshow can't really be "won over". They will happily live their lives being quite skilled at navigating this shitshow, and repeating stuff like "UB is not a problem", "security bugs are only problem of bad developers", "modern C++ is mostly-safe", and so on. The biggest shitshow... the meta-shitshow here, is how many people in systems development can't see it's a shitshow. They never ventured to investigate ideas from outside of the Unix/C/C++ bubble and tried to incorporate it into systems programming. And just to be clear... Rust is not completely shitshow-free, and is just a small pocket of almost-shitshow-free environment in a vast shitshow ocean.