zlacker

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1. uecker+(OP)[view] [source] 2024-01-17 20:22:31
The attack is the idea that everybody needs to have the same priorities that Rust has and so everybody else is wrong. With regard to memory safety, this even something I could partially agree with, but then there is another problem: In contrast to Cyclone, which was a safe version of C, Rust changes a lot more than simply adding memory safety features. It is not at all like C but has completely different syntax, different conventions, and complexity similar to C++. So in many ways, I find it inferior to C (although I agree that memory safety is good), but Rust people think it is superior in every way and behave like this.
replies(1): >>treali+Jt3
2. treali+Jt3[view] [source] 2024-01-18 19:18:52
>>uecker+(OP)
It's true, not everyone has the same priorities, and Rust may not provide the right set of tradeoffs when one is deciding which language to use. I don't believe that C is strictly inferior to Rust. There are cases where it's not worth trying to use Rust instead of C.

Unsafe Rust is more complex to use than C in some ways. For example, an iterator for a slice, which contains two raw pointers, relies on the lifetime of the array it refers to lasting longer than the slice, and to encode this you need to use PhantomData [1]. Things like this make it look more arcane than plain C, simply because in C, this is implicit, and on the programmer to enforce.

[1]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/nomicon/phantom-data.html

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