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Slightly off topic: So many projects and posts boast “written in Rust”. I haven’t been on HN that long—was there a point in time where “written in C++” was a si

Slightly off topic: So many projects and posts boast “written in Rust”. I haven’t been on HN that long—was there a point in time where “written in C++” was a similar “selling point”? From a quick glance, it looks like this could have been implemented in any native language. I like Rust as much as the next guy, but using it to get clicks when Rust specifically over another native language doesn’t make a difference feels a bit clickbaity.

jen20 5y ago
Personally I rather like that convention (and similarly for Go). Often I will follow links that specify one of these two languages since I primarily work in Go and Rust, and it's useful to add them to my mental map (or favourites folder) of what is available such that if I need something similar I can find it again. Libraries or tools written in C++ interest me less personally, because they're more work for me to integrate into whatever I'm typically doing, but I can see that someone working in C++ might like such things to be labelled the same way for the same end.
pohl 5y ago
I've seen myriad "written in C/Python/Java/JavaScript/TypeScript/Lua" posts over the years. You're not imagining things, though. The world waited 30 years (from the 1985 when C++ appeared to 2015 when Rust 1.0 was released) for a new, viable language in the systems space (read: without garbage collection). That's a really long time, and the excitement around the language is well deserved.
- 0des 5y ago
  - pohl 5y ago
    Of course I thought of go – it's just not in the systems language space (it has GC). (I believe Rob Pike expressed some remorse for causing some confusion about that by using that phrase in early go documentation. I remember seeing him on stage on a 4-member panel expressing regret, anyway). So it really had been 3 decades.
  - SemiNormal 5y ago
    Go is more of an alternative for python/ruby than it is for C/C++.
- jhgb 5y ago
  > for a new, viable language in the systems space (read: without garbage collection). *Angry Oberon noises*
  - pohl 5y ago
    Stuart Smalley, as Oberon, looking into the mirror giving his daily affirmation: "I'm viable enough and, doggone it, people like me."
davidmurdoch 5y ago
- estebank 5y ago
  Dismissing a project out of hand because it's written in a certain language because it's trendy is the same faulty logic than choosing a certain language for a project because it's trendy.
  - davidmurdoch 5y ago
    I don't think you read what I said.
    - replygirl 5y ago
      i do
      - davidmurdoch 5y ago
        I wrote "read", as in the past tense of "read". :-D
- capdeck 5y ago
  > ... I'm less likely to choose it, ... I find I am more likely to choose it because you don't have to be super experienced in Rust to produce fast, reliable binaries. That is not the case with C/C++.
  - qorrect 5y ago
    > you don't have to be super experienced in Rust to produce fast That's an interesting take. As an old fart, I find Rust's choices new and unfamiliar. I like them, it seems very sound, but the learning curve for people used to C is real.
- joshmanders 5y ago
  Except this is written in Rust because the author wanted to learn Rust. > I want to try and learn Rust so I made this. Inspired by bun.
zebracanevra 5y ago
it looks like this could have been implemented in any native language I use this 30 line bash script, with a dependency on jq. It works for me, and is pretty much instant. https://pastebin.com/raw/cnDk9zs4 https://pastebin.com/raw/cnDk9zs4
- qorrect 5y ago
  Hey I like this. Can you make a powershell one?!
llimllib 5y ago
> was there a point in time where “written in C++” was a similar “selling point”? no > using it to get clicks when Rust specifically over another native language doesn’t make a difference feels a bit clickbaity. - every single article mentioning rust in any way has this complaint in the comments - I think that much of the reason people mention it is not a cynical ploy for clicks (though that exists for sure), but denotes that the program is a modern program that is likely to work in a certain way? It's hard to specify what that way is, I should try and write something about it, but I think people who complain about this are missing that it's kind of a cultural signifier more than a literal statement about the language it's written in.
- berkes 5y ago
  For me "written in Rust" signals three things: * It is probably fast. * It is almost certainly very easy to install. * If anything is missing or broken I can probably fix it myself.
coldtea 5y ago
>I haven’t been on HN that long—was there a point in time where “written in C++” was a similar “selling point”? There are a few projects that tout being written in C++, but it has never been a regular "selling point" in HN, because HN was a thing almost 2 decades after C++ was the "new hotness". So, we've seen it for Node, Rust, and Go more. >I like Rust as much as the next guy, but using it to get clicks when Rust specifically over another native language doesn’t make a difference feels a bit clickbaity. You think this person spend weeks writing this for "clicks"? Unless the author posted it, they might not even know it was posted on HN (it's often the case with posted projects: someone else finds them and posts them). They had a pet project in mind, they liked Rust and wanted to use it, they did.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
> it looks like this could have been implemented in any native language. from the readme: "How: This is written in Rust! (Or any compile-to-native language)."
mynameisash 5y ago
There was probably a time when C++ had the kind of enthusiasm that Rust does now, but as C++ was released in ~1984, I don't know that you can quite compare the two.
______-_-______ 5y ago
It's not a ploy for clicks. Programmers spend a lot of time working with programming languages and so the choice of language is an interesting thing to mention, no matter what it might be. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=written+in+c%2B%2B https://hn.algolia.com/?query=written+in+c%2B%2B https://hn.algolia.com/?query=written+in+python https://hn.algolia.com/?query=written+in+python https://hn.algolia.com/?query=written+in+go https://hn.algolia.com/?query=written+in+go https://hn.algolia.com/?query=written+in+rust https://hn.algolia.com/?query=written+in+rust EDIT: There's one exception. "Written in bash" is and will always be clickbait, fight me
- giaour 5y ago
  Wrong! "Written in COBOL" is the true clickbait.
- ziml77 5y ago
  "Written is bash" always means it's either unimpressive or absolutely horrifying.
estebank 5y ago
It's done for other languages, as others here have mentioned, but it happens more for Rust lately. A project being advertised as being written in JS or Java or C# does have a signal about how easy it is for the reader to contribute (if they know the language), to integrate it with other projects they use (network effects) or what their operation might be (can I build a single binary and deploy everywhere? what is the observability and debugging tooling like?). Rust answers some of those implicit questions in a way that is acceptable to a lot of us.
akmittal 5y ago
Last I heard was from https://www.scylladb.com/ https://www.scylladb.com/ Selling point being C++ version of cassandra
SemiNormal 5y ago
> was there a point in time where “written in C++” was a similar “selling point”? Notepad++ maybe?
amelius 5y ago
> Slightly off topic: So many projects and posts boast “written in Rust”. I haven’t been on HN that long—was there a point in time where “written in C++” was a similar “selling point”? "Written in Rust" is the new "Sent from my iPhone".
pie_flavor 5y ago
Written In Rust is great because Rust is one of those Fun And Shiny languages that people want to write in just to write in it, like Elixir or Node (topical!), except it's not going to pull an Electron and involve a giant VM and a bundle system that includes a user-mode Xbox controller driver by default, but rather is faster in its first draft than you could possibly squeeze out of one of those other languages. Rust captures the 'systems they don't teach you about in college' vibe without products written in it slightly decreasing the usability of the developer ecosystem.
z3t4 5y ago
There was a time where anything with JavaScript in the title automatically got into the front page. And now it's Rust. Rust is now in it's golden age. The question is if all the enterprise "Java" will switch over from JS to Rust, and demand that Rust change it's syntax and methodologies so that the "JS" developers can understand it.

jen20 5y ago

Personally I rather like that convention (and similarly for Go). Often I will follow links that specify one of these two languages since I primarily work in Go and Rust, and it's useful to add them to my mental map (or favourites folder) of what is available such that if I need something similar I can find it again. Libraries or tools written in C++ interest me less personally, because they're more work for me to integrate into whatever I'm typically doing, but I can see that someone working in C++ might like such things to be labelled the same way for the same end.

pohl 5y ago

I've seen myriad "written in C/Python/Java/JavaScript/TypeScript/Lua" posts over the years. You're not imagining things, though. The world waited 30 years (from the 1985 when C++ appeared to 2015 when Rust 1.0 was released) for a new, viable language in the systems space (read: without garbage collection). That's a really long time, and the excitement around the language is well deserved.

0des 5y ago
- pohl 5y ago
  Of course I thought of go – it's just not in the systems language space (it has GC). (I believe Rob Pike expressed some remorse for causing some confusion about that by using that phrase in early go documentation. I remember seeing him on stage on a 4-member panel expressing regret, anyway). So it really had been 3 decades.
- SemiNormal 5y ago
  Go is more of an alternative for python/ruby than it is for C/C++.
jhgb 5y ago
> for a new, viable language in the systems space (read: without garbage collection). *Angry Oberon noises*
- pohl 5y ago
  Stuart Smalley, as Oberon, looking into the mirror giving his daily affirmation: "I'm viable enough and, doggone it, people like me."

davidmurdoch 5y ago

estebank 5y ago
Dismissing a project out of hand because it's written in a certain language because it's trendy is the same faulty logic than choosing a certain language for a project because it's trendy.
- davidmurdoch 5y ago
  I don't think you read what I said.
  - replygirl 5y ago
    i do
    - davidmurdoch 5y ago
      I wrote "read", as in the past tense of "read". :-D
capdeck 5y ago
> ... I'm less likely to choose it, ... I find I am more likely to choose it because you don't have to be super experienced in Rust to produce fast, reliable binaries. That is not the case with C/C++.
- qorrect 5y ago
  > you don't have to be super experienced in Rust to produce fast That's an interesting take. As an old fart, I find Rust's choices new and unfamiliar. I like them, it seems very sound, but the learning curve for people used to C is real.
joshmanders 5y ago
Except this is written in Rust because the author wanted to learn Rust. > I want to try and learn Rust so I made this. Inspired by bun.

zebracanevra 5y ago

it looks like this could have been implemented in any native language I use this 30 line bash script, with a dependency on jq. It works for me, and is pretty much instant. https://pastebin.com/raw/cnDk9zs4 https://pastebin.com/raw/cnDk9zs4

qorrect 5y ago
Hey I like this. Can you make a powershell one?!

llimllib 5y ago

> was there a point in time where “written in C++” was a similar “selling point”? no > using it to get clicks when Rust specifically over another native language doesn’t make a difference feels a bit clickbaity. - every single article mentioning rust in any way has this complaint in the comments - I think that much of the reason people mention it is not a cynical ploy for clicks (though that exists for sure), but denotes that the program is a modern program that is likely to work in a certain way? It's hard to specify what that way is, I should try and write something about it, but I think people who complain about this are missing that it's kind of a cultural signifier more than a literal statement about the language it's written in.

berkes 5y ago
For me "written in Rust" signals three things: * It is probably fast. * It is almost certainly very easy to install. * If anything is missing or broken I can probably fix it myself.

coldtea 5y ago

>I haven’t been on HN that long—was there a point in time where “written in C++” was a similar “selling point”? There are a few projects that tout being written in C++, but it has never been a regular "selling point" in HN, because HN was a thing almost 2 decades after C++ was the "new hotness". So, we've seen it for Node, Rust, and Go more. >I like Rust as much as the next guy, but using it to get clicks when Rust specifically over another native language doesn’t make a difference feels a bit clickbaity. You think this person spend weeks writing this for "clicks"? Unless the author posted it, they might not even know it was posted on HN (it's often the case with posted projects: someone else finds them and posts them). They had a pet project in mind, they liked Rust and wanted to use it, they did.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

> it looks like this could have been implemented in any native language. from the readme: "How: This is written in Rust! (Or any compile-to-native language)."

mynameisash 5y ago

There was probably a time when C++ had the kind of enthusiasm that Rust does now, but as C++ was released in ~1984, I don't know that you can quite compare the two.

______-_-______ 5y ago

It's not a ploy for clicks. Programmers spend a lot of time working with programming languages and so the choice of language is an interesting thing to mention, no matter what it might be. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=written+in+c%2B%2B https://hn.algolia.com/?query=written+in+c%2B%2B https://hn.algolia.com/?query=written+in+python https://hn.algolia.com/?query=written+in+python https://hn.algolia.com/?query=written+in+go https://hn.algolia.com/?query=written+in+go https://hn.algolia.com/?query=written+in+rust https://hn.algolia.com/?query=written+in+rust EDIT: There's one exception. "Written in bash" is and will always be clickbait, fight me

giaour 5y ago
Wrong! "Written in COBOL" is the true clickbait.
ziml77 5y ago
"Written is bash" always means it's either unimpressive or absolutely horrifying.

estebank 5y ago

It's done for other languages, as others here have mentioned, but it happens more for Rust lately. A project being advertised as being written in JS or Java or C# does have a signal about how easy it is for the reader to contribute (if they know the language), to integrate it with other projects they use (network effects) or what their operation might be (can I build a single binary and deploy everywhere? what is the observability and debugging tooling like?). Rust answers some of those implicit questions in a way that is acceptable to a lot of us.

akmittal 5y ago

Last I heard was from https://www.scylladb.com/ https://www.scylladb.com/ Selling point being C++ version of cassandra

SemiNormal 5y ago

> was there a point in time where “written in C++” was a similar “selling point”? Notepad++ maybe?

amelius 5y ago

> Slightly off topic: So many projects and posts boast “written in Rust”. I haven’t been on HN that long—was there a point in time where “written in C++” was a similar “selling point”? "Written in Rust" is the new "Sent from my iPhone".

pie_flavor 5y ago

Written In Rust is great because Rust is one of those Fun And Shiny languages that people want to write in just to write in it, like Elixir or Node (topical!), except it's not going to pull an Electron and involve a giant VM and a bundle system that includes a user-mode Xbox controller driver by default, but rather is faster in its first draft than you could possibly squeeze out of one of those other languages. Rust captures the 'systems they don't teach you about in college' vibe without products written in it slightly decreasing the usability of the developer ecosystem.

z3t4 5y ago

There was a time where anything with JavaScript in the title automatically got into the front page. And now it's Rust. Rust is now in it's golden age. The question is if all the enterprise "Java" will switch over from JS to Rust, and demand that Rust change it's syntax and methodologies so that the "JS" developers can understand it.