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The fact that you may know that make_appender definition being bad does not mean every C++ user knows as well. It's also impossible for you to know ALL the poss

The fact that you may know that make_appender definition being bad does not mean every C++ user knows as well. It's also impossible for you to know ALL the possible bad, UB leading C++ code out there. I think the point the author tries to make is that, while C++ and Rust are probably "the same" for the most skillful and disciplined programmers (such as you), for average human, Rust just catches way more errors they make for them early. An extreme analogy would be trying to climb Everest all by yourself vs with a professional guide.

benreesman 4y ago
Not to disagree necessarily, but if you (give me a little rope) bucket languages that are hard to get past the compiler but more often correct when you do (Rust, Haskell), and languages where it's pretty easy to get something past the compiler and tweak it until it works well enough for your purposes (JS, C/C++), the tweak-it-until-it-kinda-works languages are fucking killing it on adoption.
- grumpyprole 4y ago
  > the tweak-it-until-it-kinda-works languages are fucking killing it on adoption. Industry clearly prioritises speed of delivery above all else. Security, reliability and maintenance are future problems (that would be nice to have). However, in order to gain the power to reason about our code and be able to prove the correctness of various properties (what a typechecker does), we have to program with more restrictive models. This has been argued many times before (e.g. Dijkstra's structured programming). Haskell and Rust are just two of many examples. My favourite is regular expressions, choose actual proper regexes and you have guaranteed O(n) execution, choose Perl/Python "Regex" and you have a potential security hole.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  > it's pretty easy to get something past the compiler and tweak it until it works That's just as true of Rust if you use clone(), Rc<> and RefCell<>. You just have to familiarize with a few boilerplate patterns, and the best part is you're only trading off a modicum of performance while preserving safety. But Rust can work quite well as a language for exploratory programming.
- davedx 4y ago
  I dunno man. I've done C, C++, JavaScript and TypeScript professionally for significant chunks of my career, and the trend that I've observed has overwhelmingly been towards stricter compilers. For example in the front-end world, TypeScript has absolutely exploded in adoption. Everyone could be still using JavaScript, but companies from startups to huge corporates have explicitly decided they want compile type safety -- often in "only" front-end code. I suspect that the adoption of Rust as a system language is going slower because that's just the natural pace of embedded/systems development, not because of anything intrinsic to Rust. There are now 30k+ lines of Rust code [1] in the Linux kernel. C++ can't claim that. [1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Rust-v6-For-Linux-Kernel https://www.phoronix.com/news/Rust-v6-For-Linux-Kernel
  - benreesman 4y ago
    Oh I think we probably see largely eye-to-eye. My weapon of choice when there are no other constraints is Haskell, and one reason I really like Rust is that I can get a lot of the Haskell features I like in a highly-performant setting. Most of the C++ I maintain these days is in whole or in part generated by Haskell. And if I have to write something fast by hand and it doesn't need to link to stuff I need, I reach for Rust generally. I was also unaware that Rust has such significant penetration in the Linux kernel, and that's a place where I can see it really shining. My first comment in this thread was something to the effect that Rust has tons of great stuff to offer, and that the memory safety argument is actually weaker than people think and probably not the only thing people should talk about. The resulting gang-tackle is just one more data point that the community is still too small and evangelical for me to want to get involved past my proprietary Rust stuff.
    - unsafecast 4y ago
      > Most of the C++ I maintain these days is in whole or in part generated by Haskell Can you expand on that? I'm currently researching something similar but lower level & lisp instead of Haskell. It would help to see some existing examples to figure out if it's worth it or not.
      - 4y ago
- bhaak 4y ago
  Javascript‘s adoption has much less to do with its language features but with its unique positioning. There was (and still isn’t) a competitor that can compete on the same level with Javascript in the browser.
- gmnash 4y ago
  JS and C++ are killing it on adoption because they had near monopolies for an extended period of time in their respective areas (browser, native higher level language). They are popular despite their obvious (some in hindsight) shortcomings due to lack of alternatives in the same categories.
ncmncm 4y ago
Literally anybody can turn on warnings and heed the results.

benreesman 4y ago

Not to disagree necessarily, but if you (give me a little rope) bucket languages that are hard to get past the compiler but more often correct when you do (Rust, Haskell), and languages where it's pretty easy to get something past the compiler and tweak it until it works well enough for your purposes (JS, C/C++), the tweak-it-until-it-kinda-works languages are fucking killing it on adoption.

grumpyprole 4y ago
> the tweak-it-until-it-kinda-works languages are fucking killing it on adoption. Industry clearly prioritises speed of delivery above all else. Security, reliability and maintenance are future problems (that would be nice to have). However, in order to gain the power to reason about our code and be able to prove the correctness of various properties (what a typechecker does), we have to program with more restrictive models. This has been argued many times before (e.g. Dijkstra's structured programming). Haskell and Rust are just two of many examples. My favourite is regular expressions, choose actual proper regexes and you have guaranteed O(n) execution, choose Perl/Python "Regex" and you have a potential security hole.
zozbot234 4y ago
> it's pretty easy to get something past the compiler and tweak it until it works That's just as true of Rust if you use clone(), Rc<> and RefCell<>. You just have to familiarize with a few boilerplate patterns, and the best part is you're only trading off a modicum of performance while preserving safety. But Rust can work quite well as a language for exploratory programming.
davedx 4y ago
I dunno man. I've done C, C++, JavaScript and TypeScript professionally for significant chunks of my career, and the trend that I've observed has overwhelmingly been towards stricter compilers. For example in the front-end world, TypeScript has absolutely exploded in adoption. Everyone could be still using JavaScript, but companies from startups to huge corporates have explicitly decided they want compile type safety -- often in "only" front-end code. I suspect that the adoption of Rust as a system language is going slower because that's just the natural pace of embedded/systems development, not because of anything intrinsic to Rust. There are now 30k+ lines of Rust code [1] in the Linux kernel. C++ can't claim that. [1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Rust-v6-For-Linux-Kernel https://www.phoronix.com/news/Rust-v6-For-Linux-Kernel
- benreesman 4y ago
  Oh I think we probably see largely eye-to-eye. My weapon of choice when there are no other constraints is Haskell, and one reason I really like Rust is that I can get a lot of the Haskell features I like in a highly-performant setting. Most of the C++ I maintain these days is in whole or in part generated by Haskell. And if I have to write something fast by hand and it doesn't need to link to stuff I need, I reach for Rust generally. I was also unaware that Rust has such significant penetration in the Linux kernel, and that's a place where I can see it really shining. My first comment in this thread was something to the effect that Rust has tons of great stuff to offer, and that the memory safety argument is actually weaker than people think and probably not the only thing people should talk about. The resulting gang-tackle is just one more data point that the community is still too small and evangelical for me to want to get involved past my proprietary Rust stuff.
  - unsafecast 4y ago
    > Most of the C++ I maintain these days is in whole or in part generated by Haskell Can you expand on that? I'm currently researching something similar but lower level & lisp instead of Haskell. It would help to see some existing examples to figure out if it's worth it or not.
    - 4y ago
bhaak 4y ago
Javascript‘s adoption has much less to do with its language features but with its unique positioning. There was (and still isn’t) a competitor that can compete on the same level with Javascript in the browser.
gmnash 4y ago
JS and C++ are killing it on adoption because they had near monopolies for an extended period of time in their respective areas (browser, native higher level language). They are popular despite their obvious (some in hindsight) shortcomings due to lack of alternatives in the same categories.

ncmncm 4y ago

Literally anybody can turn on warnings and heed the results.