From: david.brown@hesbynett.no   
      
   On 29/07/2025 14:16, Dan Cross wrote:   
   > In article <106a04v$2hiar$1@dont-email.me>,   
   > Julio Di Egidio   wrote:   
   >> On 29/07/2025 00:18, Dan Cross wrote:   
   >>   
   >>> I'm not terribly interested in marketing slogans, to be honest.   
   >>> "Safety" in this case has a very well-defined meaning, which may   
   >>> not be the same as yours.   
   >>   
   >> Maybe you don't realise it, but you are *only* repeating   
   >> the fake history and the fraudulent marketing slogans.   
   >   
   > Unsupported assertions coupled with a lack of engagement with   
   > the material points under discussion are not persuasive.  If you   
   > disagree with any of my statements, you can engage with the   
   > arguments in good faith and provide data.   
   >   
   > Or, if you prefer, how about a comparative study of a decently   
   > large program, one version written in C, and the other in Rust?   
   > Compare: https://github.com/dancrossnyc/rxv64 and   
   > https://github.com/mit-pdos/xv6-public   
   >   
   > Otherwise, I suggest that you buckle up when you get behind the   
   > wheel.   
   >   
      
   I personally don't know enough Rust to make any reasonable comparison   
   with other languages.  I also think there is scope for all sorts of   
   languages, and it seems perfectly reasonable to me for Rust to be   
   "better" than C while also having C be "better" than Rust - different   
   languages have their strengths and weaknesses.   
      
   But one thing that bothers me is that Rust advocates almost invariably   
   compare modern Rust, programmed by top-rank programmers interested in   
   writing top-quality code, with ancient C written by people who may have   
   very different abilities and motivations.   
      
   Rust is the new, cool language - the programmers who use it are   
   enthusiasts who are actively interested in programming, and talented   
   enough to learn the language themselves and are keen to make the best of   
   it.  C, on the other hand, has been the staple language for workhorse   
   tasks.  The great majority of people programming in C over the decades   
   do so because that's what they learned at university, and that's what   
   their employers' pay them to write.  They write C code to earn a living,   
   and while I am sure most take pride in their jobs, their task is not to   
   write top-quality bug-free C code, but to balance the cost of writing   
   code that is good enough with the costs and benefits to customers.   
      
   So it is an artificial and unfair comparison to suggest, as many Rust   
   enthusiasts do, that existing C code has lots of bugs that could be   
   prevented by writing the code in Rust - the bugs could be prevented   
   equally well by one of those Rust programmers re-writing the code in   
   good, modern C using modern C development tools.   
      
   I also see little in the way of comparisons between Rust and modern C++.   
     Many of the "typical C" bugs - dynamic memory leaks and bugs, buffer   
   overflows in arrays and string handling, etc., - disappear entirely when   
   you use C++ with smart pointers, std::vector<>, std::string<>, and the   
   C++ Core Guidelines.  (Again - I am not saying that C++ is "better" than   
   Rust, or vice versa.  Each language has its pros and cons.)   
      
      
   So while I appreciate that comparing these two projects might be more   
   useful than many vague "C vs. Rust" comparisons, it is still a   
   comparison between a 10-20 year old C project and a modern Rust design.   
   The most immediate first-impression difference between the projects is   
   that the Rust version is sensibly organised in directories, while the C   
   project jumbles OS code and user-land utilities together.  That has,   
   obviously, absolutely nothing to do with the languages involved.  Like   
   so often when a Rust re-implementation of existing C code gives nicer,   
   safer, and more efficient results, the prime reason is that you have a   
   re-design of the project in a modern style using modern tools with the   
   experience of knowing the existing C code and its specifications (which   
   have usually changed greatly during the lifetime of the C code).  You'd   
   get at least 90% of the benefits by doing the same re-write in modern C.   
      
      
   (As for the topic of this thread - Rust is getting steadily more popular   
   regardless of what anyone may think about the language, so it's own   
   newsgroup seems perfectly reasonable to me.)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)