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Most (if not all) of your posts here on HN boil down to "C/C++ bad, Rust good". I wonder what you are trying to achieve by this, but I assure you that this does

by googh 2y ago

Most (if not all) of your posts here on HN boil down to "C/C++ bad, Rust good". I wonder what you are trying to achieve by this, but I assure you that this does not do Rust any favor other than giving the impression that the Rust community is obnoxious.

tialaramex 2y ago
> Most (if not all) of your posts here on HN boil down to "C/C++ bad, Rust good". I haven't measured but it's easy to say categorically that it's not "all" unless somehow my posts about network protocols, aeroplanes, security and psychology among others fall into this vague category. And yes, like Ignaz Semmelweis I can see an obvious improvement to how my profession does what it does and it's infuriating that the response from many other practitioners is "No, I don't like change, therefore you're crazy for explaining why I should change" Ignaz Semmelweis died in an asylum. But on the other hand while Ignaz was correct and his proposals would have worked he couldn't explain why because germ theory was only confirmed after he died. Rust isn't in that situation, we know already exactly what the problems are with C++. So that means I can tell you not just that using C++ is a bad idea, but why it's a bad idea.
- googh 2y ago
  Most HN users already use languages with GC which are more memory safe than Rust. People still use C++ either because they are maintaining existing code, or they work in domains where memory safety is not really necessary (games, HFT, ML). Apart from these, C++ is rarely used in the real world. > practitioners is "No, I don't like change, therefore you're crazy for explaining why I should change" Who exactly are you referring to here? Your co-workers? LLVM maintainers? or the Linux kernel developers? Please be more precise.
  - hyperbrainer 2y ago
    What is "more memory-safe than rust" supposed to mean? Rust is completely memory-safe.
    - tialaramex 2y ago
      Only safe Rust can guarantee this, and only as a consequence of any unsafe Rust being correct. Most of the popular Garbage Collected languages of course also have a way to escape, in some cases via an "unsafe" keyword or magic unsafe package to a language where the same safety rules do not exist, in this sense the difference in Rust is that it's the same language. I'd actually say the more memory safe option would be a language like WUFFS where it pays a high price (generality) to deliver categorically better safety and performance. Most software could not be written in WUFFS but also most of the software which could be written in WUFFS isn't.
Ukv 2y ago
I found their comment an interesting contribution to the discussion, pointing to a couple of specific pitfalls in C++. It's not just an empty "C/C++ bad, Rust good", and I don't see why it'd give the impression of an obnoxious community.
- googh 2y ago
  I just wrote that as an observation, and I did not mean to offend the parent. Now, let me explain why I felt that way. First and foremost, the phrase "undefined behavior" only applies to C and C++ because the specifications of those languages define it. The statement that Rust has no UB does not make sense because Rust has no specification, and all behavior is defined by the default implementation. For example, C/C++ specifications state that using a pointer after calling "free()" on it is UB. But an implementation can make it well-defined by adding a GC and making "free()" a no-op. Hence, memory safety is entirely orthogonal to UB. Another example: signed overflow being UB is not a memory safety problem unless the value is used for array indexing. Also, it is possible to enable bounds checking in STL containers (like _GLIBCXX_ASSERTIONS). It seems like that a lot of Rust fans read John Regehr's posts and use "undefined behavior" as a boogeyman to throw shade at C/C++. They repeat the same points ad nauseam. It also helps that the phrase "undefined behavior" evokes strong emotions (eg., "nasal demons"). I see the parent commenter doing this frequently and sometimes[1] even in the C++ subreddit (of all the places!). How is this not obnoxious? Here[2] is another person doing the same, but in a spicier tone. Linked lists and graphs are safe if you have an isoheap allocator (look at Fil-C). You can say that it is moral to endlessly reiterate the problems of unsafe languages, because it could lead to more secure software. But see the reply to my other comment by "hyperbrainer"[3] which says that Rust is "completely" memory safe, which is entirely wrong[4]. It is hard not to suspect the motives of those who claim to be concerned about memory safety. [1] -https://old.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/1fu0y6n/when_a_background_thread_races_against_the/lpw9m2l/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/1fu0y6n/when_a_backgro... [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32121622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32121622 [3] - I am unable to reply because of the depth. [4] - Rust requires unsafe to do a lot of things which can be done in safe code in a GC'd language. Thus, unsafe is pretty common in Rust than most GC'd languages. If a segfault can literally kill a person, it is absolutely immoral to choose Rust over Java (it does not matter that Rust "feels" safer than Java).

by googh 2y ago

tialaramex 2y ago

> Most (if not all) of your posts here on HN boil down to "C/C++ bad, Rust good". I haven't measured but it's easy to say categorically that it's not "all" unless somehow my posts about network protocols, aeroplanes, security and psychology among others fall into this vague category. And yes, like Ignaz Semmelweis I can see an obvious improvement to how my profession does what it does and it's infuriating that the response from many other practitioners is "No, I don't like change, therefore you're crazy for explaining why I should change" Ignaz Semmelweis died in an asylum. But on the other hand while Ignaz was correct and his proposals would have worked he couldn't explain why because germ theory was only confirmed after he died. Rust isn't in that situation, we know already exactly what the problems are with C++. So that means I can tell you not just that using C++ is a bad idea, but why it's a bad idea.

googh 2y ago
Most HN users already use languages with GC which are more memory safe than Rust. People still use C++ either because they are maintaining existing code, or they work in domains where memory safety is not really necessary (games, HFT, ML). Apart from these, C++ is rarely used in the real world. > practitioners is "No, I don't like change, therefore you're crazy for explaining why I should change" Who exactly are you referring to here? Your co-workers? LLVM maintainers? or the Linux kernel developers? Please be more precise.
- hyperbrainer 2y ago
  What is "more memory-safe than rust" supposed to mean? Rust is completely memory-safe.
  - tialaramex 2y ago
    Only safe Rust can guarantee this, and only as a consequence of any unsafe Rust being correct. Most of the popular Garbage Collected languages of course also have a way to escape, in some cases via an "unsafe" keyword or magic unsafe package to a language where the same safety rules do not exist, in this sense the difference in Rust is that it's the same language. I'd actually say the more memory safe option would be a language like WUFFS where it pays a high price (generality) to deliver categorically better safety and performance. Most software could not be written in WUFFS but also most of the software which could be written in WUFFS isn't.

Ukv 2y ago

I found their comment an interesting contribution to the discussion, pointing to a couple of specific pitfalls in C++. It's not just an empty "C/C++ bad, Rust good", and I don't see why it'd give the impression of an obnoxious community.

googh 2y ago
I just wrote that as an observation, and I did not mean to offend the parent. Now, let me explain why I felt that way. First and foremost, the phrase "undefined behavior" only applies to C and C++ because the specifications of those languages define it. The statement that Rust has no UB does not make sense because Rust has no specification, and all behavior is defined by the default implementation. For example, C/C++ specifications state that using a pointer after calling "free()" on it is UB. But an implementation can make it well-defined by adding a GC and making "free()" a no-op. Hence, memory safety is entirely orthogonal to UB. Another example: signed overflow being UB is not a memory safety problem unless the value is used for array indexing. Also, it is possible to enable bounds checking in STL containers (like _GLIBCXX_ASSERTIONS). It seems like that a lot of Rust fans read John Regehr's posts and use "undefined behavior" as a boogeyman to throw shade at C/C++. They repeat the same points ad nauseam. It also helps that the phrase "undefined behavior" evokes strong emotions (eg., "nasal demons"). I see the parent commenter doing this frequently and sometimes[1] even in the C++ subreddit (of all the places!). How is this not obnoxious? Here[2] is another person doing the same, but in a spicier tone. Linked lists and graphs are safe if you have an isoheap allocator (look at Fil-C). You can say that it is moral to endlessly reiterate the problems of unsafe languages, because it could lead to more secure software. But see the reply to my other comment by "hyperbrainer"[3] which says that Rust is "completely" memory safe, which is entirely wrong[4]. It is hard not to suspect the motives of those who claim to be concerned about memory safety. [1] -https://old.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/1fu0y6n/when_a_background_thread_races_against_the/lpw9m2l/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/1fu0y6n/when_a_backgro... [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32121622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32121622 [3] - I am unable to reply because of the depth. [4] - Rust requires unsafe to do a lot of things which can be done in safe code in a GC'd language. Thus, unsafe is pretty common in Rust than most GC'd languages. If a segfault can literally kill a person, it is absolutely immoral to choose Rust over Java (it does not matter that Rust "feels" safer than Java).