Comment by blub
6 months ago
The pain will always remain when refactoring or changing code, with modifications cascading in the function and type definitions.
If a language is hard to write at first, it’s always hard to write. The saving grace of C++ is that one mustn’t use the overcomplicated functional aspects, template meta-programming, etc. Through some amazing circumstances, all of the above (or their equivalents) + async is exactly what idiomatic Rust code has become.
Inside Rust there is a not so ugly language that is struggling to come to light and it is being blocked at every step.
> If a language is hard to write at first, it’s always hard to write.
That seems obviously false. Most fancy programming languages are difficult to write at first, C++ included. But they all get easier over time.
Rust got way easier to write over time for me. I'm soooo much more productive in it now compared to when I started. Does C++ not get easier to write over time too?
You’re mixing up developers becoming more competent with the language becoming easier.
Neither C++ nor Rust are becoming easier unless new features are added which make them simpler to use in some circumstance.
C++11 & co did make many things simpler. For Rust I don’t know the details of what’s upcoming; it doesn’t seem to be getting simpler.
A significant amount of Rust’s “new” features over the last years have been “yeah if you tried to use x and y together, that didn’t work, but now it does.” From an end user perspective, a lot has been made more straightforward over time.