5 ms·

I agree that C is best. I think Rust is actually a language with some severe downsides, despite having including some very good ideas and C having some real i

by uecker 10mo ago

I agree that C is best. I think Rust is actually a language with some severe downsides, despite having including some very good ideas and C having some real issues. But it will take a couple of years before one can discuss this rationally without being flamed at.

MeetingsBrowser 10mo ago
> Rust is actually a horrible language Can you expand a little?
- darkhorse13 10mo ago
  They never said it's a horrible language.
  - MeetingsBrowser 10mo ago
    The original comment was edited after I replied.
    - uecker 10mo ago
      Yes, sorry, apparently not quick enough. I actually do not think it is horrible. It is a nice language, but I still do not like it and see many downsides. What I hate though is how aggressively it is marketed. See my other response for details.
      - MeetingsBrowser 10mo ago
        That is fair. Rust is my most used language, and I agree Rust has many downsides and pain points. But for my work, the positives outweigh the downsides of other languages I've used (including Python, Java, C++, and C). But it ultimately depends on your situation. People elsewhere on this post are listing weaknesses of Rust that I consider to be strengths and vice versa.
      - IshKebab 10mo ago
        Nobody is marketing it. It doesn't have a marketing budget. What you're seeing are lots of people that really like it because it's really good. Not flawless obviously but a significant improvement on C and C++.
        uecker 10mo ago
        I see a lot of activity of very specific parts of the industry promoting it. But also enthusiasts doing aggressive marketing are doing aggressive marketing - even if they do not have a budget. Whether it is an improvement is debatable. From my perspective, it is an improvement in some aspects and a significant step back in others. What is unacceptable though is the significant hate and pressure towards people who have other priorities and preferences, which is created by the "we must stamp out memory safety issues at all cost and Rust is the solution" narrative.
        IshKebab 10mo ago
        > Whether it is an improvement is debatable. Not really. > it is an improvement in some aspects and a significant step back in others Of course. Very few improvements are better in every way. There's always something you can find to like about the old solution. Horses are friendlier than cars. Records allow bigger artwork than CDs. Unlike DVDs (at first anyway) you can write to VHS. Unlike Typescript, Javascript doesn't need a compile step. FORTRAN77 fits nicely on punch cards. That doesn't mean there's really any serious debate about them being improvements. I will freely admit that Rust has only average compile time (though it's better than C++ at this point), high complexity, and async Rust is full of footguns. But I could come up with a much longer list of complaints for C. > we must stamp out memory safety issues at all cost and Rust is the solution Yeah I think memory safety is actually probably not the most important thing about Rust. Having a modern strong type system is arguably more significant. Memory safety is important too of course - even if you don't care about security memory safety issues are often plain hard to debug bugs.
        uecker 10mo ago
        I program C a lot and I do not have to spent any noticeable time on debugging memory issues. I think all these arguments are essentially a strawman based on a very bad worst-case old-style C code - ignoring useful tooling and modern style can change the picture a lot.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
idle_zealot 10mo ago
If you want to spread this idea, it would probably help your cause if you pointed to what you think Rust does particularly poorly. Steep learning curve, npm-esque packaging?
- uecker 10mo ago
  The article gave many good reasons where Rust is lacking. The points you raise are also clearly issues. My main additional issues are the high complexity, the syntax, the lack of stability, compilation times (and monomorphization), and lack of alternate implementations. Ignoring the language itself, the aggressive and partially misleading negative and positive marketing.
  - cozzyd 10mo ago
    Lack of (useful) dynamic linking is a huge problem IMO.
    - goku12 10mo ago
      What do you mean by useful dynamic linking? Dynamic linking with C ABI is supported natively in Rust and is very widely used (just checked GitHub), especially for FFI like in Python modules (PyO3). If you mean an ABI that supports all the Rust features (without extern C), then it's a problem faced by every language that has more features than C - C++, Haskell, Go, Zig, etc included. To solve that problem, somebody will have to design a new stable standard common ABI that natively supports all the features from these languages, or at least makes it possible to express these features in some way.
      - cozzyd 10mo ago
        C++ has reasonable dynamic linking (there are ABI breaks, but I only remember only one really bad one with std::basic_string and C++11), obviously excluding a lot of metaprogramming features, but a lot of C++ dynamic libraries exist that are widely used. Supposedly Swift does a better job, though I'm not familiar. Yes, Rust can dynamically link with a C ABI (as can any language) but it loses a lot of the expressiveness (I imagine, I'm not a rust developer) to have to use the C ABI. Dynamic languages of course support dynamic linking.

by uecker 10mo ago

MeetingsBrowser 10mo ago

> Rust is actually a horrible language Can you expand a little?

darkhorse13 10mo ago
They never said it's a horrible language.
- MeetingsBrowser 10mo ago
  The original comment was edited after I replied.
  - uecker 10mo ago
    Yes, sorry, apparently not quick enough. I actually do not think it is horrible. It is a nice language, but I still do not like it and see many downsides. What I hate though is how aggressively it is marketed. See my other response for details.
    - MeetingsBrowser 10mo ago
      That is fair. Rust is my most used language, and I agree Rust has many downsides and pain points. But for my work, the positives outweigh the downsides of other languages I've used (including Python, Java, C++, and C). But it ultimately depends on your situation. People elsewhere on this post are listing weaknesses of Rust that I consider to be strengths and vice versa.
    - IshKebab 10mo ago
      Nobody is marketing it. It doesn't have a marketing budget. What you're seeing are lots of people that really like it because it's really good. Not flawless obviously but a significant improvement on C and C++.
      - uecker 10mo ago
        I see a lot of activity of very specific parts of the industry promoting it. But also enthusiasts doing aggressive marketing are doing aggressive marketing - even if they do not have a budget. Whether it is an improvement is debatable. From my perspective, it is an improvement in some aspects and a significant step back in others. What is unacceptable though is the significant hate and pressure towards people who have other priorities and preferences, which is created by the "we must stamp out memory safety issues at all cost and Rust is the solution" narrative.
        IshKebab 10mo ago
        > Whether it is an improvement is debatable. Not really. > it is an improvement in some aspects and a significant step back in others Of course. Very few improvements are better in every way. There's always something you can find to like about the old solution. Horses are friendlier than cars. Records allow bigger artwork than CDs. Unlike DVDs (at first anyway) you can write to VHS. Unlike Typescript, Javascript doesn't need a compile step. FORTRAN77 fits nicely on punch cards. That doesn't mean there's really any serious debate about them being improvements. I will freely admit that Rust has only average compile time (though it's better than C++ at this point), high complexity, and async Rust is full of footguns. But I could come up with a much longer list of complaints for C. > we must stamp out memory safety issues at all cost and Rust is the solution Yeah I think memory safety is actually probably not the most important thing about Rust. Having a modern strong type system is arguably more significant. Memory safety is important too of course - even if you don't care about security memory safety issues are often plain hard to debug bugs.
        uecker 10mo ago
        I program C a lot and I do not have to spent any noticeable time on debugging memory issues. I think all these arguments are essentially a strawman based on a very bad worst-case old-style C code - ignoring useful tooling and modern style can change the picture a lot.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]

idle_zealot 10mo ago

If you want to spread this idea, it would probably help your cause if you pointed to what you think Rust does particularly poorly. Steep learning curve, npm-esque packaging?

uecker 10mo ago
The article gave many good reasons where Rust is lacking. The points you raise are also clearly issues. My main additional issues are the high complexity, the syntax, the lack of stability, compilation times (and monomorphization), and lack of alternate implementations. Ignoring the language itself, the aggressive and partially misleading negative and positive marketing.
- cozzyd 10mo ago
  Lack of (useful) dynamic linking is a huge problem IMO.
  - goku12 10mo ago
    What do you mean by useful dynamic linking? Dynamic linking with C ABI is supported natively in Rust and is very widely used (just checked GitHub), especially for FFI like in Python modules (PyO3). If you mean an ABI that supports all the Rust features (without extern C), then it's a problem faced by every language that has more features than C - C++, Haskell, Go, Zig, etc included. To solve that problem, somebody will have to design a new stable standard common ABI that natively supports all the features from these languages, or at least makes it possible to express these features in some way.
    - cozzyd 10mo ago
      C++ has reasonable dynamic linking (there are ABI breaks, but I only remember only one really bad one with std::basic_string and C++11), obviously excluding a lot of metaprogramming features, but a lot of C++ dynamic libraries exist that are widely used. Supposedly Swift does a better job, though I'm not familiar. Yes, Rust can dynamically link with a C ABI (as can any language) but it loses a lot of the expressiveness (I imagine, I'm not a rust developer) to have to use the C ABI. Dynamic languages of course support dynamic linking.