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Comment by Aeolun

10 months ago

It’s true though? I don’t see anyone picking C/C++ over Rust/Go in my immediate environment.

That might reflect my environment, but all of the things I’d consider C variations for I’d use Rust for as well…

14 comments

Aeolun

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59nadir  10 months ago

It's definitely your environment, Rust isn't nearly as popular for actual projects getting done as it is in (for example) StackOverflow's survey. C, C++, Odin and Zig are all languages where whatever C knowledge you have right now can trivially be put to use to do things, immediately, I think it makes perfect sense that unless someone is just really into doing Rust things they'll just take the trivially applicable ways of working and use the aforementioned languages (which all have much better support for batch memory management and custom allocators than Rust, it should be added).

  • baranul  10 months ago

    There are a lot of C programmers who do not like or are not fond of Zig or Odin. For highly proficient C and C++ programmers, many consider them not worth their time. Not even counting, that both Zig and Odin are in beta. It's an investment to become as proficient in the other language.

    An example is Muratori from handmade hero, who publicly stated he dislikes Zig and pretty much sees it as a confused mess[1]. He thinks Odin is kind of OK, because it has metaprogramming (which other languages do too), but is way below Jai. Between Jai and Odin, he thought Jai was the one with potential and could get him to switch/use. Odin's slight popularity, as a kind of Jai-lite, is often attributed to Jai being a closed beta. But, it appears that might change soon (Jai going public or opening up beta use more), along with an upcoming book on Jai.

    Programming languages like Go and V (Vlang), have more of a use case for new programmers and general-purpose, because they are easier to learn and use. That was the point of their creation.

    [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVVhwALd0o4 (Full Casey Muratori: Language Perf and Picking A Lang Stream)

    • 59nadir  10 months ago

      I would suggest linking to a timestamped point in the video instead of the entire thing. With regards to Odin having metaprogramming this is either a misunderstanding on your part of what was said or a misunderstanding from Casey Muratori with regards to Odin; Zig has a much stronger claim to having metaprogramming with `comptime` being as powerful as it is, whereas Odin only scarcely can be said to have a limited "static if" in the `when` keyword, plus your average parametric polymorphism via template parameters.

      C programmers (and C++ programmers) who don't like Zig or Odin can simply use C (or C++), it's not really the case that they have to switch to anything, much less something as overwrought as Rust. My point is that it is natural for someone who is at any proficiency level above 0 in C to want to apply that proficiency in something that allows them to make use of those skills, and C, C++, Odin and Zig all allow them to do that, pretty much immediately.

      You contend that "It's an investment to become as proficient in the other language" but I would argue that this is a very wide spectrum where Rust falls somewhere in the distance as opposed to all of the languages I mentioned instead being far closer and more immediately familiar.

      5 replies →

rdtsc  10 months ago

I meant the whole “we are on the right side of history” and if you’re not with us you’re against us and we’ll wage a public drama campaign against you.