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Let's keep this on track; we're only talking about the learning curve here. Nobody here is saying c/c++ or rust is better after their respective learning curve

Let's keep this on track; we're only talking about the learning curve here. Nobody here is saying c/c++ or rust is better after their respective learning curves. No need to be defensive, they're just languages, and every language has its strengths and weaknesses. To the point: modern c++ is easier to learn nowadays. shared_ptr and unique_ptr are as easy as Rc and Box, but without the borrow checker making things harder. One doesn't have to deal with the decades of difficulties when learning c/c++. One can choose to dive into a terrible legacy c++ project just like they can dive into an unsafe mess like Actix, but thats hardly a reflection on how easy to learn a language, just the codebase you're learning from. And rust's front-loading of problems is a great thing! It also makes it harder to learn, which is the point here.

vvanders 5y ago
I think we're working from different definitions of learning curves. I include in the learning curve understanding your memory ownership model, not introducing use after free, heap corruption or other failure modes. I would argue that if you don't understand the ownership of your data you don't really understand C++(or C) and you're still learning the language. That's usually the big shift I see when developers who have a background in higher level languages moving down to C++. I've seen plenty use after free and heap corruption happen in C++0x11 and onward codebases both staying completely within modern best practices and when code diverges since there's no guardrails(ex: std::string::c_str, std::unique_ptr::get and the like). Once you include all the footguns that exist(yes, even in modern C++) and the legacy parts of existing codebases or code that diverges from modern C++ that's why I think it has a much higher learning curve to be producing code that is at the same quality as a passing compile from Rust in aggregate.
- moldavi 5y ago
  That's reasonable; one's threshold of "safe enough" factors in. If one is just designing a game, or a command line tool for internal use, one needn't make it completely rock solid, and C++ has the better learning curve. If one includes the requirement to make it safer, Rust has the better learning curve. And then if someone actually values memory safety, they use a GC'd language and laugh at how many engineer-months and proofs it will take us to make code as safe as theirs. Sigh, such is life...

vvanders 5y ago

I think we're working from different definitions of learning curves. I include in the learning curve understanding your memory ownership model, not introducing use after free, heap corruption or other failure modes. I would argue that if you don't understand the ownership of your data you don't really understand C++(or C) and you're still learning the language. That's usually the big shift I see when developers who have a background in higher level languages moving down to C++. I've seen plenty use after free and heap corruption happen in C++0x11 and onward codebases both staying completely within modern best practices and when code diverges since there's no guardrails(ex: std::string::c_str, std::unique_ptr::get and the like). Once you include all the footguns that exist(yes, even in modern C++) and the legacy parts of existing codebases or code that diverges from modern C++ that's why I think it has a much higher learning curve to be producing code that is at the same quality as a passing compile from Rust in aggregate.

moldavi 5y ago
That's reasonable; one's threshold of "safe enough" factors in. If one is just designing a game, or a command line tool for internal use, one needn't make it completely rock solid, and C++ has the better learning curve. If one includes the requirement to make it safer, Rust has the better learning curve. And then if someone actually values memory safety, they use a GC'd language and laugh at how many engineer-months and proofs it will take us to make code as safe as theirs. Sigh, such is life...