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> To be blunt, the security of the software that runs so much of the world is way more important than the feelings of some programmers who feel that their belov

> To be blunt, the security of the software that runs so much of the world is way more important than the feelings of some programmers who feel that their beloved languages are under attack. As someone that have created software in at least 7 programming languages, including Rust, I agree with you, i only disagree with the recipe and the tactics used. The bugs will happen, and contrary to the constant hammering sales pitch, Rust will not escape from them. Its like saying we are free from uncertainty. Its a false promise and anyone with real life experience in big software that are not neurotic about security like someone that only see software under this perspective would do. Now, i believe Rust will likely have less bugs in the end? It depends most of the coder, but taking that variable out of the way, its more likely because its design is more strong into that direction. Cant people fix security bugs once they happen? this will be the approach be it in Rust, C++.. Rust still will have to wrap insecure parts in unsafe{} blocks anyway, the same way a C++ coder do only that its not a keyword. Im all for Rust having the right to tell its strenghts, i like the tech and what its offering, i can see why it can be better, but lets take care of the language used and the ideology behind our wording, its all i'm asking here.. Its time for the Rust community to grow up and stop pitching by shaming other languages, projects and communities, as if its the only reasonable answer like as if was some sort of master-race of programming languages and everything else should be replaced because its garbage. This is not true, and while i like the tech, im worried about how a culture formed around bullying "inferior" languages will become with time.

geofft 5y ago
The Rust community tries extremely hard not to shame other languages, projects, and communities. If you're talking about ideology, you will not see any ideology from the Rust project saying "This other language sucks." You'll just see "We're trying to build a high-quality technical product." In fact, the Rust compiler itself depends heavily on LLVM (C++), Cargo fetches crates using libgit2 (C), rustup downloads updates using libcurl (C), Rust uses the C standard library (C) instead of directly making syscalls like Go/Zig/etc. do, memory allocation used to use jemalloc (C) until they switched to using the platform's C standard library for compatibility, etc. If there were any belief in the Rust community that other languages are garbage, those dependencies would have been replaced long ago. If outsiders are saying that other languages are inferior, it is because they've examined the evidence and made up their minds, not because anyone is organizing a bullying campaign. Most of the people saying that do, in fact, have extensive "real life experience" with C and C++ and have come to their conclusions based on that experience. Which is to say, I don't know any way that the Rust project could try harder to steer the language and ideology to be more respectful of other languages other than by making Rust a less compelling language.
- tptacek 5y ago
  I mean, I'm a fan of this project and happy about Rust's emerging role in the world, but that first sentence is obviously not true. Maybe they're trying harder lately.
  - steveklabnik 5y ago
    It has been longstanding policy of the project itself to take this stance. That doesn’t mean that every single community member follows our example, though, or that everyone involved is perfect. But we made a deliberate decision to try and avoid this as much as possible. Part of this was informed by my past experiences…
    - tptacek 5y ago
      I mean, come on. Are you on a bunch of Slacks? At least one of them has a :resf: emoji. It's not just random Rust users; there are people deeply involved in Rust itself that disparage other languages. Maybe that's gotten better recently, but, again, come on: look at the "About" section on this project --- which is a great project! --- and how it talks about C/C++. I happen to think Rust people are correct about C/C++, despite loving in my bones how it feels to write C code. But that doesn't mean I have to pretend that there's a real norm in the Rust community of respecting other languages. To me, this whole thing about Rust and its decorum in language debates reminds me of those projects that don't have codes of conducts, but instead a "be excellent to each other" policy. I believe what you're saying is something the Rust project wants to be true. But that doesn't make it so! I say this with love as someone looking forward to the next couple thousand lines of Rust I'm going to have to write at my job.
      - steveklabnik 5y ago
        I'm not on basically any Slacks, no. "RESF" is a meme, and it's a meme for a reason. There is far more complaining about it than it actually existing. I actually got halfway to publishing a quantitative analysis on this... What do you think is disrespectful about the about page? Maybe this is like, part of where we differ. Stating facts plainly, and talking about tradeoffs isn't disparaging. This is an engineering discussion. This isn't contempt culture. This isn't some sort of "JavaScript is shit and anyone that uses it is an idiot," which is an attitude that is a problem and is corrosive. The about page doesn't even say C and C++ are bad languages! It says that characteristics of them make it unsuitable for a specific kind of application, due to requirements that they believe are important. That's it. And yes, I do believe that it is something that the project and project leadership wants to be true, that is less true the further you get away from the project itself. We do not have the power (nor the desire) to control what every single person says on the internet. It is about leading by example. We do not make language comparisons in official marketing or documentation, when people show up and are flamebait-y and disparaging of other languages, we tell them "hey we don't do that here" and ask them to cut it out. To me, this feels very, very different and better than a lot of language spaces. YMMV.

geofft 5y ago

The Rust community tries extremely hard not to shame other languages, projects, and communities. If you're talking about ideology, you will not see any ideology from the Rust project saying "This other language sucks." You'll just see "We're trying to build a high-quality technical product." In fact, the Rust compiler itself depends heavily on LLVM (C++), Cargo fetches crates using libgit2 (C), rustup downloads updates using libcurl (C), Rust uses the C standard library (C) instead of directly making syscalls like Go/Zig/etc. do, memory allocation used to use jemalloc (C) until they switched to using the platform's C standard library for compatibility, etc. If there were any belief in the Rust community that other languages are garbage, those dependencies would have been replaced long ago. If outsiders are saying that other languages are inferior, it is because they've examined the evidence and made up their minds, not because anyone is organizing a bullying campaign. Most of the people saying that do, in fact, have extensive "real life experience" with C and C++ and have come to their conclusions based on that experience. Which is to say, I don't know any way that the Rust project could try harder to steer the language and ideology to be more respectful of other languages other than by making Rust a less compelling language.

tptacek 5y ago
I mean, I'm a fan of this project and happy about Rust's emerging role in the world, but that first sentence is obviously not true. Maybe they're trying harder lately.
- steveklabnik 5y ago
  It has been longstanding policy of the project itself to take this stance. That doesn’t mean that every single community member follows our example, though, or that everyone involved is perfect. But we made a deliberate decision to try and avoid this as much as possible. Part of this was informed by my past experiences…
  - tptacek 5y ago
    I mean, come on. Are you on a bunch of Slacks? At least one of them has a :resf: emoji. It's not just random Rust users; there are people deeply involved in Rust itself that disparage other languages. Maybe that's gotten better recently, but, again, come on: look at the "About" section on this project --- which is a great project! --- and how it talks about C/C++. I happen to think Rust people are correct about C/C++, despite loving in my bones how it feels to write C code. But that doesn't mean I have to pretend that there's a real norm in the Rust community of respecting other languages. To me, this whole thing about Rust and its decorum in language debates reminds me of those projects that don't have codes of conducts, but instead a "be excellent to each other" policy. I believe what you're saying is something the Rust project wants to be true. But that doesn't make it so! I say this with love as someone looking forward to the next couple thousand lines of Rust I'm going to have to write at my job.
    - steveklabnik 5y ago
      I'm not on basically any Slacks, no. "RESF" is a meme, and it's a meme for a reason. There is far more complaining about it than it actually existing. I actually got halfway to publishing a quantitative analysis on this... What do you think is disrespectful about the about page? Maybe this is like, part of where we differ. Stating facts plainly, and talking about tradeoffs isn't disparaging. This is an engineering discussion. This isn't contempt culture. This isn't some sort of "JavaScript is shit and anyone that uses it is an idiot," which is an attitude that is a problem and is corrosive. The about page doesn't even say C and C++ are bad languages! It says that characteristics of them make it unsuitable for a specific kind of application, due to requirements that they believe are important. That's it. And yes, I do believe that it is something that the project and project leadership wants to be true, that is less true the further you get away from the project itself. We do not have the power (nor the desire) to control what every single person says on the internet. It is about leading by example. We do not make language comparisons in official marketing or documentation, when people show up and are flamebait-y and disparaging of other languages, we tell them "hey we don't do that here" and ask them to cut it out. To me, this feels very, very different and better than a lot of language spaces. YMMV.