C++ vs Rust

[Daniel Duffy]

Goodbye, Rust. I wish you success but I'm back to C++ (sorry, it is a rant)

…And the problem with Rust is that it just doesn't have critical mass and, frankly, I don't think it will ever have. Recently, Linus Torvalds complained somewhere that old C dinosaurs don't want to learn Rust. For higher level stuff (e.g.: web backends) Go offers faster iteration cycles than Rust because it has a gentler learning curve and better compile times. Yes, Rust adoption is rising but competing technologies are also getting better (e.g.: safer C++ with better linting tools, JIT JavaScript and WASM engines getting faster) or rising faster (Go).

And then there's the elephant in the room: Rust is almost irrelevant for finding jobs. The majority of the Rust programming jobs asks primarily for deep knowledge in specialized technologies: cryptocurrencies/blockchain, finance trading, machine learning/data analysis, obscure network protocols, cybersecurity, etc. In those positions, Rust expertise is, at most, a "nice to have". My point is that you'll never be hired for knowing Rust well but for knowing well the domain.

 

[MichaelLewis]

Goodbye, Rust. I wish you success but I'm back to C++ (sorry, it is a rant)

…And the problem with Rust is that it just doesn't have critical mass and, frankly, I don't think it will ever have. Recently, Linus Torvalds complained somewhere that old C dinosaurs don't want to learn Rust. For higher level stuff (e.g.: web backends) Go offers faster iteration cycles than Rust because it has a gentler learning curve and better compile times. Yes, Rust adoption is rising but competing technologies are also getting better (e.g.: safer C++ with better linting tools, JIT JavaScript and WASM engines getting faster) or rising faster (Go).

And then there's the elephant in the room: Rust is almost irrelevant for finding jobs. The majority of the Rust programming jobs asks primarily for deep knowledge in specialized technologies: cryptocurrencies/blockchain, finance trading, machine learning/data analysis, obscure network protocols, cybersecurity, etc. In those positions, Rust expertise is, at most, a "nice to have". My point is that you'll never be hired for knowing Rust well but for knowing well the domain.

I’ve been seeing a lot of these types of post lately on LinkedIn.

I am share their sentiment at this point. Rust isn’t worth the effort. If you’re good at C++, you can get a Rust job (in the really off chance someone is hiring for that).

 

[Daniel Duffy]

I thought DoD were hiring Rust programmers by the bucketload??

Have developers got the run of themselves?

Tulip mania (Dutch: tulpenmanie) was a period during the Dutch Golden Age when contract prices for some bulbs of the recently introduced and fashionable tulip reached extraordinarily high levels. The major acceleration started in 1634 and then dramatically collapsed in February 1637. It is generally considered to have been the first recorded speculative bubble or asset bubble in history.[2] In many ways, the tulip mania was more of a then-unknown socio-economic phenomenon than a significant economic crisis. It had no critical influence on the prosperity of the Dutch Republic, which was one of the world's leading economic and financial powers in the 17th century, with the highest per capita income in the world from about 1600 to about 1720.[3][4] The term tulip mania is now often used metaphorically to refer to any large economic bubble when asset prices deviate from intrinsic values.[5][6]

 

[Daniel Duffy]

Might be interesting

 

[Daniel Duffy]

Random quote

This is a textbook example of "rewrite-itis" disease.
Ubuntu folks decided to rewrite the core Linux tools that have been working great for decades, in Rust.
Just because they like their shiny (or, more like rusty) new programming language.
Rust also started infecting the Linux kernel (it's time for "Stainless Linux", the Rust-free kernel fork! )

It's not going well. A lot of basic tools are failing the tests. Some of them don't work at all.

In order to "fix" one non-existing problem, they've introduced 100s of disastrous failures that will cascade, as a lot of other tools depend on those tools.

This is obviously a religious quest, and not a sensible engineering decision.

It's on the heels of the release of Cosmic Desktop that was written in supposedly "memory safe" Rust, but it's leaking memory like there's no tomorrow (yes, memory leaks are a safety issue too. E.g. leaks can be exploited direclty (DDOS etc.) and indirectly).
It's starting to feel like someone is trying to sabotage Linux.

Imagine how much productive work those people could be doing instead. Improving performance, supporting more devices, etc.

If software engineers focused on solving actual problems instead of getting distracted like babies, every time there's a YAPL (Yet Another Programming Language), engineering would be 50 years ahead.
Not to be harsh, but these are the kind of software engineers who will be replaced by AI first. This is a waste of a human brain, and it's something AI can already do.

 

[Paul Lopez]

Wow that is sad to hear!