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For someone new to systems programming, should I just start with Rust? Or should I learn C/C++ first and then learn Rust? I've just done projects in Python,JS

For someone new to systems programming, should I just start with Rust? Or should I learn C/C++ first and then learn Rust? I've just done projects in Python,JS & Java so far.

spoiler 4y ago
I've personally been doing C and then C++ for about a decade before moving onto Rust 2-3 year ago. I don't think you're missing out on much by skipping C or C++, but I recommend dabbling in them a bit (doesn't matter if before/while/after learning Rust), as it will make you appreciate Rust more.
oleganza 4y ago
I learned Rust because I need to write low-level high-performance stuff and I don't want to spend time learning how to do it correctly in C++. Rust compiler automates many chores for me, just like any computer technology is supposed to.
PerFartmann 4y ago
Keep on using python and JS. When the time comes you can start with Rust
Twisol 4y ago
Rust has a bit of a steeper learning curve at the start, but it pays off once you get used to it. C and C++ are deceptively simple at first, but as time goes on you keep discovering more nuances that affect most of your code. There's no real problem starting with Rust, especially if you have some experience with other languages. The biggest difference is going to be getting used to dealing explicitly with memory, since all the languages you listed have a garbage collector; but this is true of all of C, C++ and, Rust. Be kind to yourself -- don't expect it all to click instantly.
sondr3 4y ago
I started using Rust because I wanted a programming language that compiled to native binaries, and the choice at the time was really only C++, Go and Rust. In the end I chose Rust because it was new and shiny, and I've stuck with it. Never written a single unsafe line of code or anything low-level, it's just been CLI tools and web APIs.
skywhopper 4y ago
You’ll ultimately need to know both. Lots of new stuff will be in Rust, but plenty of old C/C++ code won’t be going away in our lifetimes. I’d start with the one used by the projects you are most motivated to work on immediately.
the_duke 4y ago
This is highly personal and depends on your learning style. I always want to learn bottom up, and personally recommend starting with C. A) Rust gives you many great abstractions that you will want to use, even if you skip the standard library. This gets in the way of really learning to work with and understanding pointers and low level mechanisms. You can certainly do that in Rust, but you have to force yourself to ignore most oft the language. B) You will have to read and interact with C code eventually, and be it just calling out to libraries or wrapping libraries in Rust interfaces. A solid understanding of C is critical to do that correctly. There's also a lot of safety tooling that you rarely need with Rust, but should be comfortable with. (Like valgrind) After learning Rust you will hate working with C (well, I do...), so it's better to do it early.
- tialaramex 4y ago
  I essentially began with C, but my guess is that you should start lower if you can. You don't want to get fooled into thinking C's abstract machine is what your actual machine is like, because it really, really isn't. A bunch of the stuff C is deliberately vague about because it wasn't portable in the 1970s is very concrete and important to understand about on a real computer. Rust's Wrapping<u8> and Saturating<i16> have behaviour that you could buy with a real CPU (indeed your actual CPU almost certainly can do Wrapping<u8> with no extra work) but C doesn't promise anything like this and names types things like "short int" which could be anything. On the other hand, some things C makes seem obviously concretely real, are just being simulated convincingly and that's not necessarily how your CPU works at all. Nobody really promised "pointers" are just integers you can go around doing arithmetic with for example.
pizza234 4y ago
Unless you're doing isolated experiments, it's complicated, because systems programming inevitable interfaces and coexists with C. So one will need to have a reasonable understanding of C and its ecosystem (I'm doing this now). Moving from high-level languages to Rust is going to be a nice punch in the face :) Some people suggest to learn C/C++ but that ultimately depends on the resources available. If one has infinite time, certainly it's ideal, but with limited time, I think learning Rust will already be very demanding. My suggestion: find some small projects you find interesting. Follow the usual Rust learning path (reference book first, then find other books), and apply it to the projects you've chosen; after an year or so, ask the question again. Other small suggestion: don't start from book that pretend to teach Rust by learning another topic, because the amount of Rust that can be taught in 100 pages is useless (a lot of books pretend to do so). On the other hand, there are way more books to find fun projects/topics than there were an year ago.
thetrashcanman 4y ago
I would argue that if you’re really interested in systems programming, learning C is required just because the vast majority of the resources on systems programming is explained using C. The only notable exception is the Book Rust In Action! That being said, is your goal to be a systems programmer or a rust programmer? If it’s the latter, then learn Rust! But, as it seems that you are learning programming in general, learn the basics and data structures algorithms (these are rather language agnostic).
dijit 4y ago
C will teach you how computers think. Rust is it's own thing; I personally really like it but going from C to Rust is harder than just going to Rust as you have to "unlearn" C paradigms. You'll probably be "better" if you go C first, but it will take a lot of time and energy. In the end its completely up to you.
- Twisol 4y ago
  > C will teach you how computers think. It will teach you how a PDP-11 thinks, at best. The cache hierarchy and speculative execution are completely hidden at the level of C, to start with. You want to learn how computers think, pick up an assembly language. (Any one will do.) You want to build portable low-level software, learn Rust, Zig, C, or C++ (in my personal order of preference).
  - antegamisou 4y ago
    > You want to learn how computers think, pick up an assembly language. For which you'd need to be familiar with a low-level language like C.
    - Filligree 4y ago
      Assembly was my first language. I had no trouble picking that up, and in fact didn't meet a compiler until ten years later. They were much too expensive at the time.
    - ImprobableTruth 4y ago
      ... no? In fact I think learning assembly before C makes a lot more sense than the other way around.
      - orobinson 4y ago
        This. The computer science degree I did started off in the first term with us building computers on an FPGA by mapping out the logic gates, then programming it in assembly. Learning how to program in C followed this. It's a good way of helping people with no programming knowledge get past the stage of "what are those magic colourful words you type that somehow make the computer do things?".
deckiedan 4y ago
It depends what you're trying to do. If you want just to "play" and do some tiny projects as low level as reasonable - go for learning C first. You'll learn a lot - and then when you learn rust, the reasons why things are done that way will make a lot of sense. Also, so many low level utils are written in C - having a basic knowledge of it is really useful. But don't try to build a big complex thing in it unless you have a really good reason to (or you fall in love with C. Some people do!) If you want to actually build something big and complex and for real world use - probably go for Rust. If you want to build a big production system using an already established tech that's based on C++, learn that. (Eg. one of the C++ based game engines, or a C++ GUI framework, or whatever).
amalcon 4y ago
It's difficult to answer this right now because the overwhelming majority of people who use Rust now have at least some background in C or C++. If you're coming from Java, the most difficult thing you'll need to learn is memory management, as all of those languages do that for you. The other difficult thing is threading, but that's 1) unnecessary and 2) not actually that different from Java. Rust forces you (unsafe aside) to do memory management in one specific way, and verifies it in the compiler. C and C++ let you do whatever you want, though C++ encourages (without requiring) a Rust-like approach. I think Rust will probably be better if you want to have a constrained environment that tries to prevent mistakes. C will be better if you want to explore on your own, learn from the mistakes, and thus understand why Rust wants you to do particular things. C++ frankly doesn't have a whole lot to recommend it unless you are working with a C++ codebase, already know C, or really need one of its features.
- cbm-vic-20 4y ago
  > If you're coming from Java, the most difficult thing you'll need to learn is memory management, I'm coming from a largely Java background (though I program a lot of C and assembly as a hobby), and this statement is very true. Getting used to the borrow checker and reference lifetimes has been the largest obstacle so far. But once that is understood, the rest of Rust is basically learning the idioms and ecosystem. I will likely change how I write C based on my experience with Rust's memory ownership model..
packetlost 4y ago
Depends on what you're doing, but really Rust is built with the explicit goal of being able to link to C easily. You would be doing yourself a favor to learn C (not C++) in general, but especially because you will be able to use C libraries from Rust.
qwery 4y ago
> should I learn C/C++ first and then learn Rust? If your endpoint is Rust anyway, just start there. You can always learn C (and/or C++) later. I don't think it matters (much) which language you start with. Any one of the suggested languages (or commonly suggested languages in general) will be fine. I think this applies in general too, at any levels of skill/experience, but probably matters more for someone with less experience.
kjeetgill 4y ago
Start with C. C++ is fine too. You don't need to 100% the language, a few months experience will be be handy for the rest of your computing career. It'll be a perfectly reasonable stepping stone for reading C++ without really needing to learn all the details to write it. As much as any language can be: C is still the lingua franca, a relative common denominator. As you explore different parts of the computing environment around you, you'll run into it constantly. Learning about python? C. Digging into how your program talks to the OS? glibc and the man pages and most examples will be C oriented. Any documentation ever explains how something is laid out in memory? It'll be explained in C structs. How function calls work? The assembly will be explained in terms of C code and C's calling convention. Any language's FFI? C. Digging into the JVM, browsers, Javascript? It's C++ but you'll know enough to eyeball the code. This is mostly about all the things you'll want to be able to read about well. Anything you'll want to know has been done in C or C++ — Nothing big exists that you'll want to explore is mostly written in Rust or Zig yet. And there are still things that can't reasonably be yet either (oversimplification).
rust_is_dead 4y ago
My advice would be to learn the language that your operating system is written in.
Symmetry 4y ago
Learning enough C to be able to understand most C you come across is a much, much smaller lift than doing the same with C++. It can be useful later and also give you an understanding of how computers work, at least down to the level of abstraction they present to compiled code which does hide some of the underlying complexity. And I think, for me at least, having a C level understanding of things will help understand the design and rules of Rust more easily. You don't need to learn it first but spending a weekend on it before diving into Rust is plausibly a good idea. C++ has everything C has plus many layers of complexity deposited over it that can make you more productive but also obscure your relationship with the machine. If you're going to go on to Rust I wouldn't bother with C++ at all right now.
jerf 4y ago
Personally I'd recommend Rust first, then C. Rust's borrowing and ownership semantics are not bizarre and novel solutions to things that aren't problems in other languages. Rust's borrowing and ownership semantics are a compiler-level reification of problems that exist in all languages, and especially multithreaded languages. This 100% includes C. You may not adopt Rust's exact solutions in all cases, but if your are programming at a system's level at all and you're not thinking about the problems that Rust exposes directly, you're in trouble and you don't even know it. Using Rust is a great way to work in an environment where the compiler is forcing you to learn how that all works, and will train you good and hard about how to think about issues of ownership and what code is allowed to touch what. I primarily work in Go, a garbage collected language, and I heavily use the concurrency features. That doesn't mean I don't have to think about ownership because the language lacks any support for it, or that I don't have to worry about who is responsible for deallocating things because I work in a GC'd language. It means I have to think about those things, but I lack support from the language. My personal career experience means this is not a terrible tradeoff; as a result of all my time in Erlang and Haskell it is no big deal for me to operate concurrently in a manner that I know will work, because while they are different than Rust, they were also harsh taskmasters in terms of only allowing me to do certain things that work. Other tradeoffs make Go worth it for me despite this lack of language support. But the lack of support doesn't make the problems go away. It just makes it so you can't see them immediately at compile time. I would expect that someone who learned Rust for a year, then learned C for a year, would probably produce better C code than someone who learned C for two years. Eventually, the C programmer will, by hook and by crook, learn all the things that Rust would have taught you, but you'll be learning it in an enviromnent that lets you make mistakes, then build on them for months before they finally blow up in your face. It is far easier to learn about what mistakes you are making in an environment where it instantly tells you that you made a mistake. (Also, I should clarify something: By "C" here, I mean programming in raw C, without any particular additional support. For the sort of purposes I'm talking about here, I actually consider "C with a strong static analysis tool like Coverity" a separate language. If you use such a tool pervasively and work in a code base that has either been cleaned to its satisfaction or started from scratch under the analyzer's support, you can also learn in a fast-feedback environment what not to do. It won't be the exact same lessons as Rust, but it'll be good enough; there are many paths to enlightenment in this case, just as I trod a completely different one as mentioned above. The important point is to use one of these, or perhaps another, and not simply stand in front of the monster that is Raw C with nothing but your own wits to guide you. I don't care how smart you are. It'll eat you alive. You do not want to be responsible for trying to tame the thing yourself under your own power and nothing else.)
NIckGeek 4y ago
I'd recommend learning Rust because the way Rust pushes you into writing code will lead you to write better C code, etc. People that learn C or C++ first often end up fighting the Rust compiler a bit until they adjust their mindset.
klabb3 4y ago
Rust is written in the blood of fallen C/C++ projects. If you're willing to accept, at face value, that certain easy tasks are convoluted for Good Reasons, you can go straight to Rust. If you want figure out why for yourself, start with C.
- Animats 4y ago
  That is the best description of why Rust exists that I've seen so far.
aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
Most production systems have been transitioning to Rust in the past few years, so that’s the safest bet in my opinion. The story I’m seeing at most companies is that they have a few old guys taking care of maintaining their legacy C/C++ codebase, and there’s a diverse bunch of young folks shipping new components in Rust.
gary17the 4y ago
> For someone new to systems programming, should I just start with Rust? Or should I learn C/C++ first and then learn Rust? IMHO, if your end-goal is Rust, learn Rust directly. The angle I am coming from: I've been doing C++ for 20 years and Rust for over a year. Learning C/C++ can provide great value on its own, through gaining knowledge of how lower-level programming primitives work, but many of your C/C++ skills won't be subsequently applicable to Rust, except perhaps for core concepts such as a stack, a heap, owning memory, a `struct`, etc. This is caused by the fact that Rust takes many programming abstractions much _farther_ than C and in a substantially _different_ direction than C++. For example: where C uses manually managed pointers, Rust uses compile-time checked ownership and borrowing; where C++ uses inheritance, Rust uses generics and composition; where C uses void pointers ;) and C++ uses pure virtual functions, Rust uses traits and `where` clauses; where C and C++ use... a programmer's eyeballs to guarantee multi-threaded correctness ;), Rust uses compile-time "marker" traits; and so on. Don't get me wrong: C and C++ are extremely able, powerhouse languages worth your time in their own respect, it is just that most of the C/C++ -specific knowledge you invest your time to learn beforehand won't be directly applicable to Rust later on, because Rust just does things in a significantly different way than C/C++. Oh, don't forget to RTFM - Rust is easy to learn by reading (in order to understand its unique concepts), but Rust is hard to learn by experimentation alone (trying 100 different syntax variations to see what compiles).
nextaccountic 4y ago
Don't start with C++. Between C and Rust, Rust has better tooling and an easy to use library ecosystem. C is a smaller and easier to grasp language. I would start with Rust if you want to write a real world project. And probably start with Rust if you just want to write some leetcode algorithms as well (but C is fine here too)

For someone new to systems programming, should I just start with Rust? Or should I learn C/C++ first and then learn Rust? I've just done projects in Python,JS & Java so far.

spoiler 4y ago

I've personally been doing C and then C++ for about a decade before moving onto Rust 2-3 year ago. I don't think you're missing out on much by skipping C or C++, but I recommend dabbling in them a bit (doesn't matter if before/while/after learning Rust), as it will make you appreciate Rust more.

oleganza 4y ago

I learned Rust because I need to write low-level high-performance stuff and I don't want to spend time learning how to do it correctly in C++. Rust compiler automates many chores for me, just like any computer technology is supposed to.

PerFartmann 4y ago

Keep on using python and JS. When the time comes you can start with Rust

Twisol 4y ago

Rust has a bit of a steeper learning curve at the start, but it pays off once you get used to it. C and C++ are deceptively simple at first, but as time goes on you keep discovering more nuances that affect most of your code. There's no real problem starting with Rust, especially if you have some experience with other languages. The biggest difference is going to be getting used to dealing explicitly with memory, since all the languages you listed have a garbage collector; but this is true of all of C, C++ and, Rust. Be kind to yourself -- don't expect it all to click instantly.

sondr3 4y ago

I started using Rust because I wanted a programming language that compiled to native binaries, and the choice at the time was really only C++, Go and Rust. In the end I chose Rust because it was new and shiny, and I've stuck with it. Never written a single unsafe line of code or anything low-level, it's just been CLI tools and web APIs.

skywhopper 4y ago

You’ll ultimately need to know both. Lots of new stuff will be in Rust, but plenty of old C/C++ code won’t be going away in our lifetimes. I’d start with the one used by the projects you are most motivated to work on immediately.

the_duke 4y ago

This is highly personal and depends on your learning style. I always want to learn bottom up, and personally recommend starting with C. A) Rust gives you many great abstractions that you will want to use, even if you skip the standard library. This gets in the way of really learning to work with and understanding pointers and low level mechanisms. You can certainly do that in Rust, but you have to force yourself to ignore most oft the language. B) You will have to read and interact with C code eventually, and be it just calling out to libraries or wrapping libraries in Rust interfaces. A solid understanding of C is critical to do that correctly. There's also a lot of safety tooling that you rarely need with Rust, but should be comfortable with. (Like valgrind) After learning Rust you will hate working with C (well, I do...), so it's better to do it early.

tialaramex 4y ago
I essentially began with C, but my guess is that you should start lower if you can. You don't want to get fooled into thinking C's abstract machine is what your actual machine is like, because it really, really isn't. A bunch of the stuff C is deliberately vague about because it wasn't portable in the 1970s is very concrete and important to understand about on a real computer. Rust's Wrapping<u8> and Saturating<i16> have behaviour that you could buy with a real CPU (indeed your actual CPU almost certainly can do Wrapping<u8> with no extra work) but C doesn't promise anything like this and names types things like "short int" which could be anything. On the other hand, some things C makes seem obviously concretely real, are just being simulated convincingly and that's not necessarily how your CPU works at all. Nobody really promised "pointers" are just integers you can go around doing arithmetic with for example.

pizza234 4y ago

Unless you're doing isolated experiments, it's complicated, because systems programming inevitable interfaces and coexists with C. So one will need to have a reasonable understanding of C and its ecosystem (I'm doing this now). Moving from high-level languages to Rust is going to be a nice punch in the face :) Some people suggest to learn C/C++ but that ultimately depends on the resources available. If one has infinite time, certainly it's ideal, but with limited time, I think learning Rust will already be very demanding. My suggestion: find some small projects you find interesting. Follow the usual Rust learning path (reference book first, then find other books), and apply it to the projects you've chosen; after an year or so, ask the question again. Other small suggestion: don't start from book that pretend to teach Rust by learning another topic, because the amount of Rust that can be taught in 100 pages is useless (a lot of books pretend to do so). On the other hand, there are way more books to find fun projects/topics than there were an year ago.

thetrashcanman 4y ago

I would argue that if you’re really interested in systems programming, learning C is required just because the vast majority of the resources on systems programming is explained using C. The only notable exception is the Book Rust In Action! That being said, is your goal to be a systems programmer or a rust programmer? If it’s the latter, then learn Rust! But, as it seems that you are learning programming in general, learn the basics and data structures algorithms (these are rather language agnostic).

dijit 4y ago

C will teach you how computers think. Rust is it's own thing; I personally really like it but going from C to Rust is harder than just going to Rust as you have to "unlearn" C paradigms. You'll probably be "better" if you go C first, but it will take a lot of time and energy. In the end its completely up to you.

Twisol 4y ago
> C will teach you how computers think. It will teach you how a PDP-11 thinks, at best. The cache hierarchy and speculative execution are completely hidden at the level of C, to start with. You want to learn how computers think, pick up an assembly language. (Any one will do.) You want to build portable low-level software, learn Rust, Zig, C, or C++ (in my personal order of preference).
- antegamisou 4y ago
  > You want to learn how computers think, pick up an assembly language. For which you'd need to be familiar with a low-level language like C.
  - Filligree 4y ago
    Assembly was my first language. I had no trouble picking that up, and in fact didn't meet a compiler until ten years later. They were much too expensive at the time.
  - ImprobableTruth 4y ago
    ... no? In fact I think learning assembly before C makes a lot more sense than the other way around.
    - orobinson 4y ago
      This. The computer science degree I did started off in the first term with us building computers on an FPGA by mapping out the logic gates, then programming it in assembly. Learning how to program in C followed this. It's a good way of helping people with no programming knowledge get past the stage of "what are those magic colourful words you type that somehow make the computer do things?".

deckiedan 4y ago

It depends what you're trying to do. If you want just to "play" and do some tiny projects as low level as reasonable - go for learning C first. You'll learn a lot - and then when you learn rust, the reasons why things are done that way will make a lot of sense. Also, so many low level utils are written in C - having a basic knowledge of it is really useful. But don't try to build a big complex thing in it unless you have a really good reason to (or you fall in love with C. Some people do!) If you want to actually build something big and complex and for real world use - probably go for Rust. If you want to build a big production system using an already established tech that's based on C++, learn that. (Eg. one of the C++ based game engines, or a C++ GUI framework, or whatever).

amalcon 4y ago

It's difficult to answer this right now because the overwhelming majority of people who use Rust now have at least some background in C or C++. If you're coming from Java, the most difficult thing you'll need to learn is memory management, as all of those languages do that for you. The other difficult thing is threading, but that's 1) unnecessary and 2) not actually that different from Java. Rust forces you (unsafe aside) to do memory management in one specific way, and verifies it in the compiler. C and C++ let you do whatever you want, though C++ encourages (without requiring) a Rust-like approach. I think Rust will probably be better if you want to have a constrained environment that tries to prevent mistakes. C will be better if you want to explore on your own, learn from the mistakes, and thus understand why Rust wants you to do particular things. C++ frankly doesn't have a whole lot to recommend it unless you are working with a C++ codebase, already know C, or really need one of its features.

cbm-vic-20 4y ago
> If you're coming from Java, the most difficult thing you'll need to learn is memory management, I'm coming from a largely Java background (though I program a lot of C and assembly as a hobby), and this statement is very true. Getting used to the borrow checker and reference lifetimes has been the largest obstacle so far. But once that is understood, the rest of Rust is basically learning the idioms and ecosystem. I will likely change how I write C based on my experience with Rust's memory ownership model..

packetlost 4y ago

Depends on what you're doing, but really Rust is built with the explicit goal of being able to link to C easily. You would be doing yourself a favor to learn C (not C++) in general, but especially because you will be able to use C libraries from Rust.

qwery 4y ago

> should I learn C/C++ first and then learn Rust? If your endpoint is Rust anyway, just start there. You can always learn C (and/or C++) later. I don't think it matters (much) which language you start with. Any one of the suggested languages (or commonly suggested languages in general) will be fine. I think this applies in general too, at any levels of skill/experience, but probably matters more for someone with less experience.

kjeetgill 4y ago

Start with C. C++ is fine too. You don't need to 100% the language, a few months experience will be be handy for the rest of your computing career. It'll be a perfectly reasonable stepping stone for reading C++ without really needing to learn all the details to write it. As much as any language can be: C is still the lingua franca, a relative common denominator. As you explore different parts of the computing environment around you, you'll run into it constantly. Learning about python? C. Digging into how your program talks to the OS? glibc and the man pages and most examples will be C oriented. Any documentation ever explains how something is laid out in memory? It'll be explained in C structs. How function calls work? The assembly will be explained in terms of C code and C's calling convention. Any language's FFI? C. Digging into the JVM, browsers, Javascript? It's C++ but you'll know enough to eyeball the code. This is mostly about all the things you'll want to be able to read about well. Anything you'll want to know has been done in C or C++ — Nothing big exists that you'll want to explore is mostly written in Rust or Zig yet. And there are still things that can't reasonably be yet either (oversimplification).

rust_is_dead 4y ago

My advice would be to learn the language that your operating system is written in.

Symmetry 4y ago

Learning enough C to be able to understand most C you come across is a much, much smaller lift than doing the same with C++. It can be useful later and also give you an understanding of how computers work, at least down to the level of abstraction they present to compiled code which does hide some of the underlying complexity. And I think, for me at least, having a C level understanding of things will help understand the design and rules of Rust more easily. You don't need to learn it first but spending a weekend on it before diving into Rust is plausibly a good idea. C++ has everything C has plus many layers of complexity deposited over it that can make you more productive but also obscure your relationship with the machine. If you're going to go on to Rust I wouldn't bother with C++ at all right now.

jerf 4y ago

Personally I'd recommend Rust first, then C. Rust's borrowing and ownership semantics are not bizarre and novel solutions to things that aren't problems in other languages. Rust's borrowing and ownership semantics are a compiler-level reification of problems that exist in all languages, and especially multithreaded languages. This 100% includes C. You may not adopt Rust's exact solutions in all cases, but if your are programming at a system's level at all and you're not thinking about the problems that Rust exposes directly, you're in trouble and you don't even know it. Using Rust is a great way to work in an environment where the compiler is forcing you to learn how that all works, and will train you good and hard about how to think about issues of ownership and what code is allowed to touch what. I primarily work in Go, a garbage collected language, and I heavily use the concurrency features. That doesn't mean I don't have to think about ownership because the language lacks any support for it, or that I don't have to worry about who is responsible for deallocating things because I work in a GC'd language. It means I have to think about those things, but I lack support from the language. My personal career experience means this is not a terrible tradeoff; as a result of all my time in Erlang and Haskell it is no big deal for me to operate concurrently in a manner that I know will work, because while they are different than Rust, they were also harsh taskmasters in terms of only allowing me to do certain things that work. Other tradeoffs make Go worth it for me despite this lack of language support. But the lack of support doesn't make the problems go away. It just makes it so you can't see them immediately at compile time. I would expect that someone who learned Rust for a year, then learned C for a year, would probably produce better C code than someone who learned C for two years. Eventually, the C programmer will, by hook and by crook, learn all the things that Rust would have taught you, but you'll be learning it in an enviromnent that lets you make mistakes, then build on them for months before they finally blow up in your face. It is far easier to learn about what mistakes you are making in an environment where it instantly tells you that you made a mistake. (Also, I should clarify something: By "C" here, I mean programming in raw C, without any particular additional support. For the sort of purposes I'm talking about here, I actually consider "C with a strong static analysis tool like Coverity" a separate language. If you use such a tool pervasively and work in a code base that has either been cleaned to its satisfaction or started from scratch under the analyzer's support, you can also learn in a fast-feedback environment what not to do. It won't be the exact same lessons as Rust, but it'll be good enough; there are many paths to enlightenment in this case, just as I trod a completely different one as mentioned above. The important point is to use one of these, or perhaps another, and not simply stand in front of the monster that is Raw C with nothing but your own wits to guide you. I don't care how smart you are. It'll eat you alive. You do not want to be responsible for trying to tame the thing yourself under your own power and nothing else.)

NIckGeek 4y ago

I'd recommend learning Rust because the way Rust pushes you into writing code will lead you to write better C code, etc. People that learn C or C++ first often end up fighting the Rust compiler a bit until they adjust their mindset.

klabb3 4y ago

Rust is written in the blood of fallen C/C++ projects. If you're willing to accept, at face value, that certain easy tasks are convoluted for Good Reasons, you can go straight to Rust. If you want figure out why for yourself, start with C.

Animats 4y ago
That is the best description of why Rust exists that I've seen so far.

aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago

Most production systems have been transitioning to Rust in the past few years, so that’s the safest bet in my opinion. The story I’m seeing at most companies is that they have a few old guys taking care of maintaining their legacy C/C++ codebase, and there’s a diverse bunch of young folks shipping new components in Rust.

gary17the 4y ago

> For someone new to systems programming, should I just start with Rust? Or should I learn C/C++ first and then learn Rust? IMHO, if your end-goal is Rust, learn Rust directly. The angle I am coming from: I've been doing C++ for 20 years and Rust for over a year. Learning C/C++ can provide great value on its own, through gaining knowledge of how lower-level programming primitives work, but many of your C/C++ skills won't be subsequently applicable to Rust, except perhaps for core concepts such as a stack, a heap, owning memory, a `struct`, etc. This is caused by the fact that Rust takes many programming abstractions much _farther_ than C and in a substantially _different_ direction than C++. For example: where C uses manually managed pointers, Rust uses compile-time checked ownership and borrowing; where C++ uses inheritance, Rust uses generics and composition; where C uses void pointers ;) and C++ uses pure virtual functions, Rust uses traits and `where` clauses; where C and C++ use... a programmer's eyeballs to guarantee multi-threaded correctness ;), Rust uses compile-time "marker" traits; and so on. Don't get me wrong: C and C++ are extremely able, powerhouse languages worth your time in their own respect, it is just that most of the C/C++ -specific knowledge you invest your time to learn beforehand won't be directly applicable to Rust later on, because Rust just does things in a significantly different way than C/C++. Oh, don't forget to RTFM - Rust is easy to learn by reading (in order to understand its unique concepts), but Rust is hard to learn by experimentation alone (trying 100 different syntax variations to see what compiles).

nextaccountic 4y ago

Don't start with C++. Between C and Rust, Rust has better tooling and an easy to use library ecosystem. C is a smaller and easier to grasp language. I would start with Rust if you want to write a real world project. And probably start with Rust if you just want to write some leetcode algorithms as well (but C is fine here too)