4 ms·

In my experience, the loudest critics of Rust I have heard are actually seasoned C and C++ developers who are incredibly good at one or both languages, but know

by LexiMax 11mo ago

In my experience, the loudest critics of Rust I have heard are actually seasoned C and C++ developers who are incredibly good at one or both languages, but know almost nothing outside it. On one hand, C++ is an incredibly complicated language that one can invest considerable amounts of time into. It also used to occupy a unique niche where you get tons of abstraction features yet as much blazing speed as you care to spend time optimising. Rust is encroaching on that niche. On the other hand, C is an incredibly simple language, which does not allow for convenient expressions of particular abstractions. If they hated C++ because it was too hard to follow. What the code is doing, they probably hate rust for the similar levels of abstraction affordances. When I hear the bad faith arguments from people who really should know better, what I hear is a group of scared developers who have been able to coast on their knowledge base for years or even decades, and are now feeling like their skill set is at risk of being unnecessary. It always seemed like an unproductive attitude to have in a knowledge-based industry like software development. I am also a C++ developer, but you bet I am learning Rust on the side, because I think it's a good idea to skate where the puck is headed. I also learned enough of Zig to be dangerous a few months ago because it was fun. Either way, I would suggest those developers reflect on the reason why they have this reflexive need to throw a wrench into any conversation mentioning rust. If their intention is to slow down adoption through hostile community sentiment, it's not working.

kccqzy 11mo ago
> what I hear is a group of scared developers who have been able to coast on their knowledge base for years or even decades That’s certainly not the case for C++. The C++ language has evolved quickly, with a release every three years or so. One could coast, but they would be writing outdated C++ that no newcomer likes. That is, the entire organization needs to also coast for this behavior to be viable. Instead I see most of the bad faith criticisms of Rust coming from aficionados of other languages in roughly the same space such as Zig or Nim, or occasionally Go. They whine because they think Zig or Nim should take the place of Rust.
- LexiMax 11mo ago
  > The C++ language has evolved quickly, with a release every three years or so. There was a revival of C++ starting with C++11 and ending around the era of C++17. It was, frankly, great. However, a few things happened around and since C++20 that has caused the language to backslide. First, it seems like corporate support for C++ has dropped significantly. Apple, having successfully replaced GCC with Clang for their own internal use, no longer cares that much about keeping up with the latest C++ features, choosing to prioritize Swift instead. Google seems to have slowed their contributions after being blocked from any commitments that opened up the possibility of breaking ABI. Microsoft has gutted their Visual C++ team, which has significantly slowed the implementation pace of new features and fixing bugs...unless they're related to Unreal Engine. There are also persistent rumors going around that Microsoft are working on their own project in the spirit of rustc-codegen-gcc, but for Visual Studio. Second, it seems like a lot of the new blood that the revival decade had attracted to the C++ community and standards committee have stopped participating and given up. There's probably not one or two all-encompassing reasons for this, but the disconnected stories I keep hearing about just leave me feeling sad for the future of C++. Anecdotally, the ones that I see that are most commonly cited up are the horrendous rollout of C++ modules, the drama surrounding Safe C++ vs Safety Profiles, and the circling of the wagons around rot13_content_warning("pbaivpgrq puvyq encvfg") Arthur O'Dwyer. If I had to pick one own-goal in particular that ground my gears from a technical perspective, it's the ordeals of the developer who tried to get `std::embed` into C++. Going through the standardization process was such a nightmare for her - including trying to convince the standards committee that it was a problem worth solving in the first place - that she eventually gave up and took the idea to the C standards committee instead. After a few rounds of back-and-forth feedback, C23 now has #embed. Not only did C get the feature before C++, but the C++ standards committee gave up whatever say they had in the shape of the final product. That's not to say that I'm not looking forward to certain modern C++ features. Concepts are great, even if they fall well short of the original proposal. I use std::span and std::expected in every project I can, even if I have to use third-party polyfill libraries to deliver them. Modules could be nice when they're more widely supported. But _man_ the future of C++ looks pretty bleak from where I'm sitting, and it seems like the people in a position most able to do something about that future aren't making wise decisions.

by LexiMax 11mo ago

kccqzy 11mo ago

> what I hear is a group of scared developers who have been able to coast on their knowledge base for years or even decades That’s certainly not the case for C++. The C++ language has evolved quickly, with a release every three years or so. One could coast, but they would be writing outdated C++ that no newcomer likes. That is, the entire organization needs to also coast for this behavior to be viable. Instead I see most of the bad faith criticisms of Rust coming from aficionados of other languages in roughly the same space such as Zig or Nim, or occasionally Go. They whine because they think Zig or Nim should take the place of Rust.

LexiMax 11mo ago
> The C++ language has evolved quickly, with a release every three years or so. There was a revival of C++ starting with C++11 and ending around the era of C++17. It was, frankly, great. However, a few things happened around and since C++20 that has caused the language to backslide. First, it seems like corporate support for C++ has dropped significantly. Apple, having successfully replaced GCC with Clang for their own internal use, no longer cares that much about keeping up with the latest C++ features, choosing to prioritize Swift instead. Google seems to have slowed their contributions after being blocked from any commitments that opened up the possibility of breaking ABI. Microsoft has gutted their Visual C++ team, which has significantly slowed the implementation pace of new features and fixing bugs...unless they're related to Unreal Engine. There are also persistent rumors going around that Microsoft are working on their own project in the spirit of rustc-codegen-gcc, but for Visual Studio. Second, it seems like a lot of the new blood that the revival decade had attracted to the C++ community and standards committee have stopped participating and given up. There's probably not one or two all-encompassing reasons for this, but the disconnected stories I keep hearing about just leave me feeling sad for the future of C++. Anecdotally, the ones that I see that are most commonly cited up are the horrendous rollout of C++ modules, the drama surrounding Safe C++ vs Safety Profiles, and the circling of the wagons around rot13_content_warning("pbaivpgrq puvyq encvfg") Arthur O'Dwyer. If I had to pick one own-goal in particular that ground my gears from a technical perspective, it's the ordeals of the developer who tried to get `std::embed` into C++. Going through the standardization process was such a nightmare for her - including trying to convince the standards committee that it was a problem worth solving in the first place - that she eventually gave up and took the idea to the C standards committee instead. After a few rounds of back-and-forth feedback, C23 now has #embed. Not only did C get the feature before C++, but the C++ standards committee gave up whatever say they had in the shape of the final product. That's not to say that I'm not looking forward to certain modern C++ features. Concepts are great, even if they fall well short of the original proposal. I use std::span and std::expected in every project I can, even if I have to use third-party polyfill libraries to deliver them. Modules could be nice when they're more widely supported. But _man_ the future of C++ looks pretty bleak from where I'm sitting, and it seems like the people in a position most able to do something about that future aren't making wise decisions.