12/31/2025 at 12:44:47 PM
C++ is so bloated that every project must outlaw multiple parts of it from being used on their project. Using the whole language is an explicit antipattern.Every project must colonize a valley of the language, declare a dialect, and bit-fiddle their own thing.
It might be a measure of popularity, but not of unity.
by nacozarina
12/31/2025 at 1:27:05 PM
That's how all programming languages work. Have you used 100% of the features in any language you've used? Ever?by estimator7292
12/31/2025 at 2:41:51 PM
It's not the same though. The breadth is wildly different. In the case of things like JavaScript, C, or Go it can be said that you use -most of it- in a day to day to basis, sure, not the most magic, deep crap, but not the same can be said about C#, Rust, C++ etc on which you have a lot of features simply not used.by Bridged7756
12/31/2025 at 7:54:15 PM
Rust hasn't grown 17 ways to initialize a variable yet. Most projects use most features.When projects choose a subset of language features, it's dictated by their needs (like embedded programs disabling the standard library, or safety-critical libraries forbidding "unsafe" code out of caution). There are some people who vocally hate async, but their complaint is usually that everyone uses async even where it's unnecessary (meaning that it actually has very broad adoption).
This feels very different than having an unwanted C subset, some '98 features that were replaced in '11 and '13, with fixes for them in '20 and '26 and then projects taking years to settle on a new baseline, and still bickering whether exceptions may be allowed or not.
Rust has "editions" that let new projects disable old misfeatures (which it hasn't got many yet). Rust ecosystem is fully on board with the latest version.
by pornel
12/31/2025 at 2:21:57 PM
Hell, look at Rust. Try bootstrapping that POS with verbose logging enabled, and watch the screenfuls of command line options scrolling by for every source file in the giant multi hour compile. It's got 30 years of cruft packed into a "new" language. Just think of how ridiculously complex it would become after an actual 30 years of real world use. That's the garbage you want me to replace C or C++ with? LOLC++ sucks, but I'll take it over Rust any day.
by smeeagain2
12/31/2025 at 7:20:43 PM
Bootstrapping of the rustc compiler from scratch is a very different experience than using the language as a user. Bootstrapping requires building a C++ mrustc proto-compiler, which is where the tons of flags are needed. The rustc compiler has a custom multi-stage build system to make it and its standard library built with itself, which multiplies the time it takes. It's designed to be consistent and optimized, since most users download a pre-built binary.However, once you bootstrap it (or willing to trust someone who did), it's a breeze to build Rust projects with Cargo: `cargo build` just works with no extra flags for the majority of projects. The only finicky builds are ones that rely on C or C++ deps.
by pornel
12/31/2025 at 11:16:39 PM
[flagged]by smeeagain2
1/2/2026 at 1:24:02 AM
Calling your users idiots is not a good look for a maintainer. I don't know offhand what distro you maintain but I sincerely hope I never have to deal with someone this hostile.by free_bip
1/1/2026 at 4:38:46 AM
> I'm the guy who sees all the underlying ugliness that the idiot user ignores and pretends doesn't What’s with all the hate against the end users?“idiot end user”?
Why sign up to be a maintainer when you think so highly of the end user.
by sheepscreek
1/1/2026 at 4:43:42 AM
[flagged]by smeeagain2
1/1/2026 at 2:05:38 PM
Why not use Gentoo?by sheepscreek
1/1/2026 at 2:30:15 AM
You're harshly judging the entire language based on ease of compiling a 3rd party C++ compiler and the C11 code it emits. These gnarly build commands don't even come from the Rust project, and aren't using the Rust language.(I assume you use mrustc, and you're not going the masochist route of recreating all the development steps starting from a 15-year-old Ocaml-based prototype of a language that wasn't Rust yet).
It's fair to say that bootstrapping of Rust sucks. It really does. The non-Rust bootstrap compiler doesn't get even a fraction of the polish that rustc and Cargo get. But it's not representative of how Rust and Cargo work for basically everyone in the world except you (and a couple of other maintainers who chose to do an independent bootstrap from scratch). Bootstrapping is a one-off pain, and then building Rust with a Rust-based compiler is nice and easy.
It'd be nice to have a cleaner bootstrap story for Rust, but it will take a while (waiting for gccrs C++ reimplementation to advance enough to replace mrustc).
by pornel
1/1/2026 at 3:02:16 AM
[flagged]by smeeagain2
1/1/2026 at 3:13:00 PM
There is a cranelift backend written in Rust.Rust is pragmatic about its implementation. The goal isn't some ideological purity (despite the reputation Rust has), but to empower users to make safe and efficient systems software. LLVM works well for that, so replacing it isn't a priority. The cranelift backend exists to make debug builds faster.
by pornel
12/31/2025 at 3:26:29 PM
Yeah, no. That is not a fair description of Rust. It's got far fewer mistakes than C++ and, get this, it has a mechanism for tentative features that can get revised and fixed based on usage experience. It doesn't always work especially for far-reaching decisions (I hear that async is considered problematic), but it prevents a lot of stupid mistakes that C++ is carrying along forever - with a few exceptions (e.g. garbage collection support, extern templates) and some very notable inclusions (the kind of botched module system, suboptimal unordered_map, std::string which is more of a byte/word array).I like C++ because I like the fairly unique high performance low level feature set, not because I particularly like most of the detailed design decisions that went into it. Rust has the same goals, but is better thought out IMO. I'm sure that I will find some more trouble in Rust as I use it more, but so far the impression is quite good. I have become pretty good at writing C++ code that works after fixing one or two stupid bugs, and that works even better in Rust, mostly without the stupid bugs because you can't forget to null-check a pointer to another subsystem while starting up etc.
by ahartmetz
12/31/2025 at 5:26:32 PM
[flagged]by smeeagain2
12/31/2025 at 7:38:14 PM
You're naming and lambasting multiple different technologies and their communities without justifying why they are so bad. Few people use C without knowing about the threat of buffer overflows or invalid pointer dereferences, and C can be used productively in spite of these obvious flaws. Instead of trying to drive people away from what they do, if you seek understanding then you should allow others to justify their reasons. If you only test your understanding against your understanding, you're not making an assessment at all. You can find and talk to many smart people here and elsewhere, if you so desire.by vacuity
12/31/2025 at 11:21:45 PM
> You can find and talk to many smart people here and elsewhere, if you so desire.Yeah, and you find can smart people on Reddit too. Problem is the low density of intellect in both places.
by smeeagain2
12/31/2025 at 7:36:06 PM
You're saying "force into this and that" like there's some evil omnipotent entity compelling people to write Rust against their own free will lol. What do you mean by forced? People enjoy writing Rust, so hence it's being written in other projects.Saying LLVM is written in C++ doesn't really bring much to the discussion. It was released 25 years ago, and C++ was released 40 years ago (hey, it's older than me lol). Rust was released like 10 years ago. So, yeah... I guess it makes sense that they used C++ back then? I'd have picked C++ back then too.
I've written C++ for about 15 years, and I don't have a blind hatred for the languge, but going back to it doesn't fill me with joy either, especially after having written Rust for the past few years.
The module system is more intuitive to use than the preprocessing file concatenation. There's also a nice package manager. I know some people find this a downside though, but I prefer it to fighting autoconf or CMake.
Syntax highlighting for Rust code doesn't lag 10+ seconds.
Symbol search doesn't require three different third-party tools to work.
Documentation is built in AND nice (no doxy doesn't count as nice, not in any universe).
Testing is built in. There's a (mostly) homogeneous build system
The borrowing rules are things you think about in C++ anyway, but Rust just makes it so you don't forget them; there's some clang lints that help with this in C++ anyway.
The syntax, while sometimes a bit noisy, is nicer in the average case, but C++ has been getting better in that regard.
There's much fewer API gotchas with Rust than with C++ (from the top of my head: closures, std::optional, std::variant, iterators, {a..z}values, a managerie of constructors, SFINAE, all these things have pain in the ass built in as a core principle). I also despise function overloading.
The macro system, while I don't like it too much in Rust, makes things
The type system in Rust is so much better it's not even comparable.
But anyway, Rust has some downsides. It requires you to change how you design solution sometimes. The compilation times are crap (but the compilers also does so much).
by spoiler
12/31/2025 at 11:30:35 PM
> You're saying "force into this and that" like there's some evil omnipotent entity compelling people to write Rust against their own free will lol.No, I'm saying that you never had free will to begin with. It was always an illusion. Read Brave New World. You have never been in control of anything. You do the things you do, support the things you support, and buy the things you buy because you were told to do so. Very little to nothing of what you do was your own actual original idea. I don't care what kind of creative genius you imagine yourself to be; I know how you've been controlled your entire life by your media owners.
Rust "has some downsides"? In point of fact it is complete garbage. A joke of a language, that is in no way a suitable replacement for C or C++. This is what I'm trying to point out to you.
It's a joke in exactly the same way Tesla's Cybertruck is a joke. You think that is a real product, that is really meant to be successful? You call me a troll? The Cybertruck was and is a giant troll. I'm just telling you the unvarnished truth.
Can you really think of NO way in which every single programming language in existence today, including Rust, Zig, and everything else, can be described as total garbage? No? Well then maybe you need to step into the nearest cryo pod.
After you wake up in 100 years, look around and see if anything has improved. Yes? You see some kind of improvement in the status quo? Nobody's using Rust anymore, and in fact have long forgotten about it? Well then. I guess that means some other people must have had greater vision than you of what the future will hold, yes?
by smeeagain2
1/1/2026 at 2:40:48 AM
The military isn't going to allow C++ anymore due to it being a massive security hazard. You can't get away with buffer overflows, use after frees, data races, etc. forever.Due to an evil entity called the military industrial complex, you are going to be using Rust in the future.
by ReflectedImage
1/1/2026 at 3:03:16 AM
No, son, I really won't. And yes, I am glad we are agreed that the military industrial complex is evil and should not be supported in anything.by smeeagain2
1/1/2026 at 3:32:53 AM
Well it's in Windows, Linux and Mac OS kernels. So you moving into Retro computing?by ReflectedImage
1/1/2026 at 4:39:23 AM
No, I just forked the last sane Linux kernel, because I was tired of the bugs and instability in 5.x and beyond. See, I like stable systems, not giant piles of increasingly complex garbage "maintained" by maniacs.by smeeagain2
1/1/2026 at 8:58:27 AM
not close to 100%, but i think i can say i ultilize most of feature of C, must more than C++.by mrheosuper
1/1/2026 at 3:01:42 AM
As a Python dev, I really hate the whole “Pythonic” idea. There isn’t just one way to do this.by pyuser583
12/31/2025 at 4:21:34 PM
Honestly... who cares? The dictionary is pretty thick, but I still speak English without much trouble.by psyclobe
12/31/2025 at 3:21:11 PM
Open up an old Java code base, and your IDE will tell you to refactoring tons of code, as it was written in an old way it thinks you shouldn't use anymore, uses deprecated classes, etc.Javascript is even more dramatic, where it will tell you to fix every single variable declaration, as people decided "var" was a mistake, and there is a whole new way of defining classes.
by nitwit005
12/31/2025 at 7:39:55 PM
Var wasn't "a mistake", and there's still (albeit niche) use cases where var makes sense. But for most cases, you do want to write a let/const declaration, even though they're not "free" technically.by spoiler
1/1/2026 at 6:06:39 PM
> Every project must colonize a valley of the language, declare a dialect, and bit-fiddle their own thing.this is really not true in my experience. I don't remember last time I worked a project which outright banned specific C++ features or had a "dialect".
by jcelerier
12/31/2025 at 2:33:16 PM
I normally disagree with such broad remarks, but in the case of C++ I agree. I sometimes see a less common feature of Python used and have to remind myself of the syntax and its usage. With C++, I start any project with the idea that I will only use a small subset of the available features. When I review other's code I pretty much need a language reference available at all times until I can settle into their particular flavor of C++by sidewndr46
12/31/2025 at 3:09:49 PM
I wonder if a subset of the language could be formalized, as some kind of opt-in decision. Like when TSR divided Dungeons & Dragons into D&D and AD&D...by emigre
12/31/2025 at 5:09:42 PM
> It might be a measure of popularity, but not of unity.Neither of which are great measures probably. What about usefulness?
by steve1977
12/31/2025 at 1:28:03 PM
to this day i don’t know what people mean by “features”.Lambdas are nice to have, just don’t nest them more than once.
I kinda wish things like std::variant had shorter syntax.
if anything i’m not a fan of c++ introducing language features as long verbose functions than to confidently make it an operator or a keyword.
by i_am_a_peasant