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I'm going to butt in with a counterpoint, since every time someone mentions "c" on the internet a bunch of Rust people come out of the woodwork and give this im

I'm going to butt in with a counterpoint, since every time someone mentions "c" on the internet a bunch of Rust people come out of the woodwork and give this impression that Rust is taking over, everything is Rust now, everyone loves Rust, etc. I've been a mobile OS developer for a decade now. Basically nobody uses Rust in the real world of firmware/kernel engineering. There are a few public examples of doing Rust in linux and Google, but the vast majority of work is still done in c or c-flavored c++. Maybe it'll catch on some day, but it's definitely NOT catching on in the real world of making actual products.

steveklabnik 4y ago
> I've been a mobile OS developer for a decade now. Basically nobody uses Rust in the real world of firmware/kernel engineering. You know it’s kinda funny, I read this comment and then tabbed over to twitter and then read this: https://blogs.blackberry.com/en/2023/02/this-is-the-kind-of-rust-the-automotive-industry-needs https://blogs.blackberry.com/en/2023/02/this-is-the-kind-of-... Anyway you’re not wrong that Rust is still a tiny portion of this kind of thing, but it is growing, and quickly. Only time will tell. (I work at a company writing firmware (and virtually everything else) in Rust, but as a startup I don’t expect that to carry as much weight as big established companies, of course.)
- Firmwarrior 4y ago
  Man oh man. I realized I'd never even seen Rust code once in my life, so I loaded up some random Rust book and skimmed through it. I know HackerNews doesn't like half-informed angry opinions, so I'll just say "I really hope Rust never takes off" and leave it at that.
  - steveklabnik 4y ago
    Not everything can be everyone's cup of tea :)
  - dralley 4y ago
    What about your brief skimming turned you off?
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Don’t worry, that’s the same amount of research done as all the other complaints about rust.
  - FullyFunctional 4y ago
    Your loss. I tried three times to learn Rust and I had plenty of doubts, but 3rd time I struck to it and it took maybe a year before I would reach for Rust before C (I have 40 years of C muscle memory so that's saying something). Some things _are_ awkward in Rust (eg. occasionally the explicit "a[x as usize]" casts are tiring), but the payoff is awesome.
    - FullyFunctional 4y ago
      ADD: what finally worked for me was to not read the book [linearly], but instead jumping between tons of sources, lots of exercises, and generally not stressing about getting everything in all the [ample] detail. And of course doing it and doing it every day. I definitely still have lots of holes (hello async) and I'm not shy about Cloning/Copying liberally unless it really matters for performance.
- Ingaz 4y ago
  Look on databases today. Especially on that area of Posrgresql mutants: similar ideas came to a lot of great minds: yugabyte, neondb, cockroach DB, timescaledb, even Amazon (Aurora) an MS here. They are trying to do different things but common: - they're all tweaking storage in very strange directions - compatibility with core postgres - importance on top (timescale is still an extension to PG) - they all trying to achive a goal of cloud-native DB And one thing is common: Rust! (cocroachdb are still on golang but they are exception) And if look what's going inside core postgres you will discover that almost all APIs of PG are duplicated in Rust so in future we'll see quite rusty PG
  - anarazel 4y ago
    > And if look what's going inside core postgres you will discover that almost all APIs of PG are duplicated in Rust so in future we'll see quite rusty PG What do you mean by this?
    - Ingaz 4y ago
      Even right now rust is quite adopted in PG community. Looking on trend I expect that in near future it will be even more: - extensions - I expect rust to become first choice - core postgresql - I expect that rust to appear first in pg tools and then in postgres itself
Tozen 4y ago
Agree with your points. There is a big difference between hype and actual change. That some hardcore fans want their favorite language to take over, is far different from their language being anywhere near to surpassing or replacing C or being at the top. C is more than just another language, it's a quasi protocol that other languages communicate among each other with. Sorry to say, but neither Rust or Zig are likely to ever reach that level of popularity, nor are other languages going to create FFIs for them to that extent. Another way to look at this. People run around saying Object Pascal/Pascal/Delphi is a "dead" language (despite how its still widely used), yet it stays around #15 on the TIOBE index, and has done so for years. Rust has barely reached #20 on that ranking site and various others. Zig is nowhere to be seen on various rankings and has yet to reach 1.0, though its going on 8 years into its development. These languages have yet to catch up to and surpass so-called "dead" Object Pascal/Pascal, much less have any shot at C, debatably in the next 10 years or ever.
- heywhatupboys 4y ago
  > yet it stays around #15 on the TIOBE index, not a snowman's chance that "Object Pascal/Pascal/Delphi" is, by ANY measure, in top 15 programming languages by usage or importance in 2023...
  - Tozen 4y ago
    Instead of just thinking about maybe only the USA or a favorite site that one might like, look at it from a wider and world perspective. You have entire school systems of various countries that use Delphi/Object Pascal. South Africa, Turkey, Jamaica, Russia, etc... To include Embarcadero is very aggressive in its outreach to schools and pushing its software and licenses, to the tune of many millions of copies (and many years). There are reasons why Embarcadero and Delphi are still very much around. There are numerous dialects, IDEs, compilers, and interpreters of Object Pascal/Pascal all over the place (including for embedded and numerous platforms). Delphi (including Turbo Pascal nostalgia), Oxygene, Free Pascal/Lazarus/CodeTyphon, PascalABC, Pascal Script, DWScript, etc... There are still tons of YouTube videos, books, and websites that are Delphi/Object Pascal/Pascal related. Millions upon millions of lines of code, that people still maintain, or are being produced by small businesses, independents, hobbyists, etc... The sum total of it, plus the years that Pascal/Object Pascal has been around, means a much greater penetration and usage than many people realize, and much more than the recently trendy or fad languages people might be thinking of. As much as people might have recently started talking about Rust or Zig on "hip" or "techie" sites, the languages are simply not that known or used to such an extent outside certain circles. Rust and Zig are not being taught like Pascal/Object Pascal was and still is in schools. They haven't been as widely written about or have as many books out about them. They aren't used as much, trusted, or relied upon. A lot more people than one might think, are on the fence, undecided, or only seldomly experimenting with them or something else. Even more, for a language to reach wide spread usage, takes more time and a lot more years than many are aware of or will admit it takes.

steveklabnik 4y ago

> I've been a mobile OS developer for a decade now. Basically nobody uses Rust in the real world of firmware/kernel engineering. You know it’s kinda funny, I read this comment and then tabbed over to twitter and then read this: https://blogs.blackberry.com/en/2023/02/this-is-the-kind-of-rust-the-automotive-industry-needs https://blogs.blackberry.com/en/2023/02/this-is-the-kind-of-... Anyway you’re not wrong that Rust is still a tiny portion of this kind of thing, but it is growing, and quickly. Only time will tell. (I work at a company writing firmware (and virtually everything else) in Rust, but as a startup I don’t expect that to carry as much weight as big established companies, of course.)

Firmwarrior 4y ago
Man oh man. I realized I'd never even seen Rust code once in my life, so I loaded up some random Rust book and skimmed through it. I know HackerNews doesn't like half-informed angry opinions, so I'll just say "I really hope Rust never takes off" and leave it at that.
- steveklabnik 4y ago
  Not everything can be everyone's cup of tea :)
- dralley 4y ago
  What about your brief skimming turned you off?
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Don’t worry, that’s the same amount of research done as all the other complaints about rust.
- FullyFunctional 4y ago
  Your loss. I tried three times to learn Rust and I had plenty of doubts, but 3rd time I struck to it and it took maybe a year before I would reach for Rust before C (I have 40 years of C muscle memory so that's saying something). Some things _are_ awkward in Rust (eg. occasionally the explicit "a[x as usize]" casts are tiring), but the payoff is awesome.
  - FullyFunctional 4y ago
    ADD: what finally worked for me was to not read the book [linearly], but instead jumping between tons of sources, lots of exercises, and generally not stressing about getting everything in all the [ample] detail. And of course doing it and doing it every day. I definitely still have lots of holes (hello async) and I'm not shy about Cloning/Copying liberally unless it really matters for performance.
Ingaz 4y ago
Look on databases today. Especially on that area of Posrgresql mutants: similar ideas came to a lot of great minds: yugabyte, neondb, cockroach DB, timescaledb, even Amazon (Aurora) an MS here. They are trying to do different things but common: - they're all tweaking storage in very strange directions - compatibility with core postgres - importance on top (timescale is still an extension to PG) - they all trying to achive a goal of cloud-native DB And one thing is common: Rust! (cocroachdb are still on golang but they are exception) And if look what's going inside core postgres you will discover that almost all APIs of PG are duplicated in Rust so in future we'll see quite rusty PG
- anarazel 4y ago
  > And if look what's going inside core postgres you will discover that almost all APIs of PG are duplicated in Rust so in future we'll see quite rusty PG What do you mean by this?
  - Ingaz 4y ago
    Even right now rust is quite adopted in PG community. Looking on trend I expect that in near future it will be even more: - extensions - I expect rust to become first choice - core postgresql - I expect that rust to appear first in pg tools and then in postgres itself

Tozen 4y ago

Agree with your points. There is a big difference between hype and actual change. That some hardcore fans want their favorite language to take over, is far different from their language being anywhere near to surpassing or replacing C or being at the top. C is more than just another language, it's a quasi protocol that other languages communicate among each other with. Sorry to say, but neither Rust or Zig are likely to ever reach that level of popularity, nor are other languages going to create FFIs for them to that extent. Another way to look at this. People run around saying Object Pascal/Pascal/Delphi is a "dead" language (despite how its still widely used), yet it stays around #15 on the TIOBE index, and has done so for years. Rust has barely reached #20 on that ranking site and various others. Zig is nowhere to be seen on various rankings and has yet to reach 1.0, though its going on 8 years into its development. These languages have yet to catch up to and surpass so-called "dead" Object Pascal/Pascal, much less have any shot at C, debatably in the next 10 years or ever.

heywhatupboys 4y ago
> yet it stays around #15 on the TIOBE index, not a snowman's chance that "Object Pascal/Pascal/Delphi" is, by ANY measure, in top 15 programming languages by usage or importance in 2023...
- Tozen 4y ago
  Instead of just thinking about maybe only the USA or a favorite site that one might like, look at it from a wider and world perspective. You have entire school systems of various countries that use Delphi/Object Pascal. South Africa, Turkey, Jamaica, Russia, etc... To include Embarcadero is very aggressive in its outreach to schools and pushing its software and licenses, to the tune of many millions of copies (and many years). There are reasons why Embarcadero and Delphi are still very much around. There are numerous dialects, IDEs, compilers, and interpreters of Object Pascal/Pascal all over the place (including for embedded and numerous platforms). Delphi (including Turbo Pascal nostalgia), Oxygene, Free Pascal/Lazarus/CodeTyphon, PascalABC, Pascal Script, DWScript, etc... There are still tons of YouTube videos, books, and websites that are Delphi/Object Pascal/Pascal related. Millions upon millions of lines of code, that people still maintain, or are being produced by small businesses, independents, hobbyists, etc... The sum total of it, plus the years that Pascal/Object Pascal has been around, means a much greater penetration and usage than many people realize, and much more than the recently trendy or fad languages people might be thinking of. As much as people might have recently started talking about Rust or Zig on "hip" or "techie" sites, the languages are simply not that known or used to such an extent outside certain circles. Rust and Zig are not being taught like Pascal/Object Pascal was and still is in schools. They haven't been as widely written about or have as many books out about them. They aren't used as much, trusted, or relied upon. A lot more people than one might think, are on the fence, undecided, or only seldomly experimenting with them or something else. Even more, for a language to reach wide spread usage, takes more time and a lot more years than many are aware of or will admit it takes.