[Info-vax] Rust as a HS language, was: Re: Quiet?

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 4/7/2022 2:22 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2022-04-07, Dan Cross <cross at spitfire.i.gajendra.net> wrote:
>> In article <t2mkq4$ib9$1 at dont-email.me>,
>> Simon Clubley  <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:
>>> The insane levels of promotion of Rust as "the" solution at the moment
>>> remind me of those days.
>>
>> I wonder where you are seeing that.  Seriously.  I know and/or
>> have worked with a number of members of the Rust community for
>> several years (members of the core, language, and tool teams,
>> for about 3 years), and they're quite gracious in admitting that
>> it's not the right solution for everything.
> 
> That's nice to hear.
> 
> As for where I am seeing it, it's more of a combined overall impression
> made up of gushing articles and what appears to be more like an organised
> religious cult (:-)) showing up at the usual places online.
> 
> For example, articles that, instead of taking a balanced approach, spend
> the first 95% of the article saying how great and perfect Rust is, and only
> in the last 5% (if at all) start mentioning in passing the unsafe stuff
> "for when you really need to do that stuff".

There are all sorts of information available in the internet. Some
of it is correct information and written by people that know what they
are talking about. Some of it is totally BS written by people that
are totally clueless. And some is in between. That is the nature of the
modern internet.

To me the unsafe piece is really a key reason to use Rust.

If you want to write code that never need to do anything
dirty memory related then there are plenty of languages
to do so.

If you want to write code that always give you free hands
then continue with C or assembler or a few other.

If you want a language that does things safe 99% of places
but allow you do do unsafe things in selected 1% of places,
then the number of options become limited.

Rust is one of those very few options.

That automatically makes it a relevant language
for those writing such code.

And note that such code is only a small fraction
of all code - the vast majority of code is business
code without such needs.

And this is not just something I say now - if you
go back to my reply to Bill about why people should
look at Rust, then that was the message.

Disclaimer - I don't code in Rust. Which means that there
is a lot of details about Rust that I don't know, but it also
means that I do not really have any emotional connection
with the language.

Arne