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Saying "it's easy to shoot yourself in the foot with C" is not constructive criticism because what's easy for you could be difficult for me. If the Rust fanboy

Saying "it's easy to shoot yourself in the foot with C" is not constructive criticism because what's easy for you could be difficult for me. If the Rust fanboy brigade could articulate actual criticism for C, such as the lack of imports, or eskewing the type system with void*, or the signedness of char, or any of the other topics beaten to death in online "C gotchas" power point presentations, then we could have a constructive conversation amongst craftspeople.

catlifeonmars 5y ago
> Saying "it's easy to shoot yourself in the foot with C" is not constructive criticism because what's easy for you could be difficult for me. That’s a fair point. Unfortunately I think that in order to really talk about the pros and cons, we’d need a relatively specific situation. Toy examples are just that… toy examples. FWIW most of the time I will make language choices based on the expected lifetime of a particular project, the relative expertise of team members working on a project, and the ease of delivering bug fixes.
Yoric 5y ago
I believe that Rust users are past caring about that. If you feel that C is a good language for your needs, then by all means, use it. I know that Rust brings me a very efficient safety net that lets me concentrate on the algorithm [1] without having to also spend quite as much time auditing, fuzzing, valgrinding and {thread, memory, ...} sanitizing my code. In addition to the safety added by the type-system, I also enjoy the convenience of tools such as `Drop`, or the ability to derive (de)serializers for most formats, etc. This is not about criticizing C. This is about picking the best tool for the job. Sometimes, it is Rust. Sometimes, it is TypeScript. I haven't encountered a job for which C was the best tool for me in a while. I'm sure that there are cases, mind you, but I don't encounter them anymore. [1] With caveats, of course. As all Rust users, I need to please the borrow-checker gods.

catlifeonmars 5y ago

> Saying "it's easy to shoot yourself in the foot with C" is not constructive criticism because what's easy for you could be difficult for me. That’s a fair point. Unfortunately I think that in order to really talk about the pros and cons, we’d need a relatively specific situation. Toy examples are just that… toy examples. FWIW most of the time I will make language choices based on the expected lifetime of a particular project, the relative expertise of team members working on a project, and the ease of delivering bug fixes.

Yoric 5y ago

I believe that Rust users are past caring about that. If you feel that C is a good language for your needs, then by all means, use it. I know that Rust brings me a very efficient safety net that lets me concentrate on the algorithm [1] without having to also spend quite as much time auditing, fuzzing, valgrinding and {thread, memory, ...} sanitizing my code. In addition to the safety added by the type-system, I also enjoy the convenience of tools such as `Drop`, or the ability to derive (de)serializers for most formats, etc. This is not about criticizing C. This is about picking the best tool for the job. Sometimes, it is Rust. Sometimes, it is TypeScript. I haven't encountered a job for which C was the best tool for me in a while. I'm sure that there are cases, mind you, but I don't encounter them anymore. [1] With caveats, of course. As all Rust users, I need to please the borrow-checker gods.