4 ms·

To be fair C++ is backwards compatible with C. That meant there was a large amount of design space they couldn't explore. Rust not going there gave them the a

• tialaramex 5y ago
  That intent to be "backwards compatible with C" doesn't stretch so far as to say, provide any way to spell valid symbols from C. Imagine you have some C that has (for whatever reason) named two important functions "class" and "fn" which are completely reasonable C symbol names. In C++ that word "class" is reserved, so you can't name symbols class, but, that is what the C symbol's name is so too bad? However in Rust, even though fn is a reserved word there's no problem referring to that symbol, you just have to spell it r#fn meaning "the symbol named fn" as distinct from the keyword fn.
• rwaksmunski 5y ago
  C++ is no longer backwards compatible with modern C.
  • kazinator 5y ago
    C++ compatibility has improved. E.g. I've noticed that C++20 has designated initializers for struct members, which were introduced in C99. So now if you're writing C that has to compile as C++, you can use C99 designated initializers, if you're OK with requiring C++20.