4 ms·
One Career, One Language: Could Rust Be This Generation's C?
Those C programmers from the 70s had it made, didn't they? One language took them from mainframes to microcomputers to workstations to early web servers to embedded systems. Entire 40-year careers with the same core skillset. Ever since then we've been playing language hopscotch.
Rust feels like the first language since C that could realistically span an entire career again. The same language that lets you write an OS kernel also builds web frontends through WASM. The same code that runs on microcontrollers also powers cloud infrastructure. When was the last time a language had that range without compromising?
Sure, we've all gotten used to juggling makefiles and autotools for system work while switching mental models for application domains, but what if we didn't have to? What if all those hard-won lessons about memory management in C were handled automatically without sacrificing performance or control?
Has anyone else made the jump from a C-based ecosystem to Rust for this reason? Are you finding it genuinely works across domains, or are there still gaps where you need to switch languages? I'm curious if others see this as a serious opportunity for a "whole career language" like C once was.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- pvg 2y agoThose C programmers from the 70s had it made, didn't they? One language took them from mainframes to microcomputers to workstations to early web servers to embedded systems. Entire 40-year careers with the same core skillset. Ever since then we've been playing language hopscotch. I'm pretty sure this premise is trivially falsifiable.
- vmcalls 2y agoC programmers had to learn plenty of new skills over the decades, but the core language knowledge remained transferable in a way that's rare. Someone who mastered pointers and memory management for Unix in 1980 could understand Linux kernel code decades later. The same C skills applied whether writing MS-DOS apps, embedded firmware, or early CGI web code. It's the consistency across wildly different computing eras that made C unique. No other mainstream language has spanned from mainframes to microcontrollers to web servers while keeping its fundamental approach intact. That's the kind of cross-domain stability that makes Rust worth watching.
- pvg 2y agoRight but C was hardly all that universal or even popular for long stretches. People knew plenty of other languages, just like they do now. The entire 8-bitter period had relatively little to do with C, for one obvious example.
- JohnFen 2y ago> Entire 40-year careers with the same core skillset. My career spans that time, and while I was primarily a C programmer before C++, then primarily a C++ programmer, I have never seen or experienced a time when C/C++ alone was anything close to being sufficient. Being a polyglot to varying degrees was always necessary.