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> I am even more frustrated with the moral crusaders from languages like Rust, one of whom went as far as to suggest that I should personally be criminally pros

> I am even more frustrated with the moral crusaders from languages like Rust, one of whom went as far as to suggest that I should personally be criminally prosecuted if some downstream Hare software has a use-after-free bug. It seems to me that these crusaders (and I've seen a few) think that because you shouldn't build a big bridge out of wood, you shouldn't build anything out of wood. Is the thinking more sophisticated than that? Honest question (and I code in Rust).

linkdd 4y ago
But wood is so unsafe, it can burn, it can rot, you need to put the nails at the correct spot and most woodworkers are dumb enough to not do that correctly. It should be criminal to build anything out of wood. Heard of forest fires huh? Guess what, they are made of wood! --- Sorry, I couldn't resist.
- Ygg2 4y ago
  > most woodworkers are dumb enough to not do that correctly. Our wood workers have a track record at that. It's one thing laughing at wooden bridges. The other thing is we already have charred landscape full of them.
- capableweb 4y ago
  Funnily enough, it might be safer to build big buildings made out of wood than steel, as it takes longer to collapse than for example steel (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/skyscrapers-of-the-future-will-be-made-out-of-wood https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/skyscrape...)
- ncmncm 4y ago
  I hear witches are made out of wood...
- lmkg 4y ago
  It is, in fact, illegal to build things out of wood. Unless you adhere to a set of best practices called the Building Code.
jerf 4y ago
I wonder how many of the True Believers know, let's say, five diverse computer languages fluently. I know it's non-zero, but I bet that would cut a lot of them out. (A "true believer" for my point here isn't someone for whom Rust is their favorite language or their generic first choice; it's someone who gets angry if someone else doesn't choose Rust for some task, and especially gets publicly angry.) I bet for a lot of the True Believers, they learned some language that isn't very good, like C, or C++-as-taught-by-schools, (which is a very bad language, much worse than C++ as a whole!), or Javascript at its worst, and then encountered Rust. Hey, I get it, that would be a pretty big leap! But you've got a path dependency in your opinions there. I'd encourage any such person to broaden their horizons a bit. It's OK. Rust really is a pretty good language and you probably won't change your opinion of it much. Plenty of people I know and respect who do know many languages still have Rust as their favorite and general default language. But it is not the only good language in the world, and other languages do offer things Rust does not. Consider trying out the Erlang environment (either via Erlang or Elixir), or Haskell, or Lisp.
- doliveira 4y ago
  > Consider trying out the Erlang environment (either via Erlang or Elixir), or Haskell, or Lisp. Isn't the whole point that Rust is a replacement for C/C++, specifically the whole "close to hardware" and (basically) zero-cost abstractions? If you can afford things like a GC or a VM there are way better languages, that's for sure.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  C++-as-taught-by-schools, that's a good way to describe it. Now, for a complete beginner, as a first language it's actually not so bad (this was my intro to programming) as long as you realize it's bad. The course structure is basically variables -> loops, conditionals -> arrays -> functions -> references & pointers -> dynamic memory allocation -> i/o files -> structs & classes -> encapsulation, polymorphism & inheritance. Maybe they'll introduce the STL vector, and maybe the smart pointer. After that, you're probably ready for algorithms and data structures: search and sort, stacks and queues and hashmaps and trees and graphs, all taught basically as 'C with classes', the justification being, you need to learn how these things are built under the hood (as if you're going to write C++ libraries for production, which you most likely aren't, but you should be aware, is their argument). Well, it's an education anyway. Then (now you're about a year in), someone will tell you, you poor thing, you've been abused by being taught that way! Use modern C++ and the STL and never use a raw pointer again. Drop that OOP stuff, learn about lambdas and functional C++ instead. You then read flame war threads about the proper way to do things, which you finally learn to ignore as they're just people with inflated egos throwing things at each other online. Finally you understand: people write firmware in C because it's about as low-level as you can get without going to assembly, and people write big projects and games in C++ because of all the libraries and the STL and good performance speed-wise, and then there are people who've abandoned C & C++ for Rust because of the memory leak issues and perhaps the convenient build system, and you never ever again write the kind of code you wrote for your assignments in your C++-as-taught-by-schools courses. Finally, you take a few Python courses and marvel at how much easier it is to code in Python, but you feel a bit better off than those who learned to program in Python, because, you at least know what pointers are. Then someone tells you, hey, learn some Java too, it's easy to get a boring corporate job if you know Java. Anyway, that's what schools are teaching right now in their core intro CS curriculum, more or less.
sanxiyn 4y ago
No, it isn't. On the other hand, you are living in a world where web browsers are written in C++. I hope we can agree this is as tragic as wooden bridges.
- jupp0r 4y ago
  Browsers have quite complex interactions with operating system runtimes and this is largely a huge pain in Rust, especially on MacOS. Binding crates are outdated, incomplete and you’d spend lots of resources writing (unsafe, crash-prone) wrappers for a shifting target which is work you wouldn’t have to do at all if you used (objective) C++. Software engineering is more than writing a program, there are economic factors at play too. That being said, I also wish my browser was written in Rust (and my OS too!).
mplanchard 4y ago
I also write Rust professionally, and I agree with another commenter that this is likely trolling. However, there is definitely a subset of the community that is so bought into the idea that memory safety is an Absolute Good that any new developments, projects, or languages that don’t make it a priority are a priori bad. I am a huge fan of rust, but we should let the language stand on its own merits and not assume that it is the only valid choice. Just because I and/or my company prioritize the features rust gives us doesn’t mean it’s the perfect solution for every problem. That said, I do feel like this view that rust is the only valid language is a minority one in the community. It just is a bit loud at times.
geodel 4y ago
> Is the thinking more sophisticated than that? I think the way it usually works is a less reasonable one would make outrageous statement, later on some one more reasonable sounding would put a context or nuance around it. So a single crusader maybe called outright troll or whatever but if a few work together they can be much effective for evangelism.

linkdd 4y ago

But wood is so unsafe, it can burn, it can rot, you need to put the nails at the correct spot and most woodworkers are dumb enough to not do that correctly. It should be criminal to build anything out of wood. Heard of forest fires huh? Guess what, they are made of wood! --- Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Ygg2 4y ago
> most woodworkers are dumb enough to not do that correctly. Our wood workers have a track record at that. It's one thing laughing at wooden bridges. The other thing is we already have charred landscape full of them.
capableweb 4y ago
Funnily enough, it might be safer to build big buildings made out of wood than steel, as it takes longer to collapse than for example steel (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/skyscrapers-of-the-future-will-be-made-out-of-wood https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/skyscrape...)
ncmncm 4y ago
I hear witches are made out of wood...
lmkg 4y ago
It is, in fact, illegal to build things out of wood. Unless you adhere to a set of best practices called the Building Code.

jerf 4y ago

I wonder how many of the True Believers know, let's say, five diverse computer languages fluently. I know it's non-zero, but I bet that would cut a lot of them out. (A "true believer" for my point here isn't someone for whom Rust is their favorite language or their generic first choice; it's someone who gets angry if someone else doesn't choose Rust for some task, and especially gets publicly angry.) I bet for a lot of the True Believers, they learned some language that isn't very good, like C, or C++-as-taught-by-schools, (which is a very bad language, much worse than C++ as a whole!), or Javascript at its worst, and then encountered Rust. Hey, I get it, that would be a pretty big leap! But you've got a path dependency in your opinions there. I'd encourage any such person to broaden their horizons a bit. It's OK. Rust really is a pretty good language and you probably won't change your opinion of it much. Plenty of people I know and respect who do know many languages still have Rust as their favorite and general default language. But it is not the only good language in the world, and other languages do offer things Rust does not. Consider trying out the Erlang environment (either via Erlang or Elixir), or Haskell, or Lisp.

doliveira 4y ago
> Consider trying out the Erlang environment (either via Erlang or Elixir), or Haskell, or Lisp. Isn't the whole point that Rust is a replacement for C/C++, specifically the whole "close to hardware" and (basically) zero-cost abstractions? If you can afford things like a GC or a VM there are way better languages, that's for sure.
photochemsyn 4y ago
C++-as-taught-by-schools, that's a good way to describe it. Now, for a complete beginner, as a first language it's actually not so bad (this was my intro to programming) as long as you realize it's bad. The course structure is basically variables -> loops, conditionals -> arrays -> functions -> references & pointers -> dynamic memory allocation -> i/o files -> structs & classes -> encapsulation, polymorphism & inheritance. Maybe they'll introduce the STL vector, and maybe the smart pointer. After that, you're probably ready for algorithms and data structures: search and sort, stacks and queues and hashmaps and trees and graphs, all taught basically as 'C with classes', the justification being, you need to learn how these things are built under the hood (as if you're going to write C++ libraries for production, which you most likely aren't, but you should be aware, is their argument). Well, it's an education anyway. Then (now you're about a year in), someone will tell you, you poor thing, you've been abused by being taught that way! Use modern C++ and the STL and never use a raw pointer again. Drop that OOP stuff, learn about lambdas and functional C++ instead. You then read flame war threads about the proper way to do things, which you finally learn to ignore as they're just people with inflated egos throwing things at each other online. Finally you understand: people write firmware in C because it's about as low-level as you can get without going to assembly, and people write big projects and games in C++ because of all the libraries and the STL and good performance speed-wise, and then there are people who've abandoned C & C++ for Rust because of the memory leak issues and perhaps the convenient build system, and you never ever again write the kind of code you wrote for your assignments in your C++-as-taught-by-schools courses. Finally, you take a few Python courses and marvel at how much easier it is to code in Python, but you feel a bit better off than those who learned to program in Python, because, you at least know what pointers are. Then someone tells you, hey, learn some Java too, it's easy to get a boring corporate job if you know Java. Anyway, that's what schools are teaching right now in their core intro CS curriculum, more or less.

sanxiyn 4y ago

No, it isn't. On the other hand, you are living in a world where web browsers are written in C++. I hope we can agree this is as tragic as wooden bridges.

jupp0r 4y ago
Browsers have quite complex interactions with operating system runtimes and this is largely a huge pain in Rust, especially on MacOS. Binding crates are outdated, incomplete and you’d spend lots of resources writing (unsafe, crash-prone) wrappers for a shifting target which is work you wouldn’t have to do at all if you used (objective) C++. Software engineering is more than writing a program, there are economic factors at play too. That being said, I also wish my browser was written in Rust (and my OS too!).

mplanchard 4y ago

I also write Rust professionally, and I agree with another commenter that this is likely trolling. However, there is definitely a subset of the community that is so bought into the idea that memory safety is an Absolute Good that any new developments, projects, or languages that don’t make it a priority are a priori bad. I am a huge fan of rust, but we should let the language stand on its own merits and not assume that it is the only valid choice. Just because I and/or my company prioritize the features rust gives us doesn’t mean it’s the perfect solution for every problem. That said, I do feel like this view that rust is the only valid language is a minority one in the community. It just is a bit loud at times.

geodel 4y ago

> Is the thinking more sophisticated than that? I think the way it usually works is a less reasonable one would make outrageous statement, later on some one more reasonable sounding would put a context or nuance around it. So a single crusader maybe called outright troll or whatever but if a few work together they can be much effective for evangelism.