Comment by anonymous908213
7 hours ago
> Are you just being snarky,
They aren't being snarky, they're stating a fact. Rust, rounding to the nearest percent, does not exist. It's a trendy language among the Silicon Valley types that HN draws, but 99.9% of the world runs on C/++, OSes written in C/++, and language VMs implemented in C/++. Maybe some day it will change, but hanging around here too much will give you a very skewed idea of how widely adopted it is.
Well, "grownups with important jobs write C" can be taken in two ways. Non-snarky, sure. There are MANY people who write C professionally.
Not as many as there are Python, Java, JS, or C++ programmers. Depending on the survey, C seems to be neck and neck with PHP.
I read the comment the other way, though. The way that says that those other more popular languages are not serious, and NOT for grownups with important jobs.
Edit: actually, Jetbrains 2025 survey has C neck and neck with Rust: https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-data-playground/ . Both "below the fold" and less than 10% of Java.
Python, Java, and JS are all implemented in C/++. C++ is an extension of C. Taken strictly, sure, not everyone is literally writing C. But C powers everything. It is still the systems language of the world, that is the foundation of all of our systems, including both embedded and phone/PC OSes. Then there's a bit of COBOL and Fortran for mainframes, Ada for military hardware, and a whole notta Rust anywhere.
Think about what Rust software people actually use. Codex CLI, uv, ripgrep, and what else? That's three pieces of software, all development tools for development nerds. Normal people aren't engaging with any of this stuff. Your metaphorical grandma has never used software written with Rust in her life.
Cobol powers the world's money and international travel. Not sure how that matters.
> Think about what Rust software people actually use
More and more Chrome, Google, Android, Cloudflare, Prime Video, and phone basebands, parts of Linux kernel, and many other things.
Normal users literally use those all day every day.
Are they 100% Rust? Of course not (well, I don't actually know if some phone basebands are, by now. Naturally very closed source). But they're not 100% another-language either.
If C disappeared from the world, the world would stop, yes. Same with Cobol. Same with Java. Same with C++. Same with assembly.
If I were to guess (completely without basis for my guess) about the number of lines of code that normal users exercise in a normal day (counting each line just once), my bet would be on Java or JS.
Would the Java be able to run without the C code? No. But normal users would not be able to do anything if only C was left. And all banks would be gone.
And in any case C would not be able to do anything without transistors.
Rust is in use in more places than you may expect. Does the hypothetical grandma use Windows' kernel? Android? Firefox? Chrome?
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There's RustPython and far more compatible than IronPython back in the day. C++ is NOT an extension of C, they diverged a lot.
>Codex CLI, uv, ripgrep, and what else?
RustDesk, Servo/Firefox, tons of gtk4-rs on Gnome and extra tools, Librsvg, CosmicDE (Fedora Atomic with Cosmic can be slightly faster than vanilla Gnome Silverblue), Ruffle, Gopher64, ArtCraft (both the vibecodec cr*p and the AI powered magical multimedia IDE doing crazy stuff which is fine).
Oh, and Harper to sharp your English skills:
https://github.com/automattic/harper
IronCalc looks better than LO Calc performance wise:
https://github.com/ironcalc/ironCalc
Gnome might be a Rust domain tomorrow and nobody would bat an eye. Fedora/RH/IBM can rewrite the Anaconda installer in Rust in no time.