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Ask HN: What is the state of C++ vs. Rust?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the state of C++ vs. Rust?

#81

Post by sotojuan »

blub wrote: post #63
treve wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To sit on the sidelines and wait till the technology and market matures is a smart decision. There's a lot of new things popping up, and not everything sticks. This is particularly true if you're running a business and you need to pick the right tech. Learning a new language though is not a wasted effort, even if eventually the language becomes obsolete. It only takes a few days to get going with something new, and t…

But one doesn't pick what to learn just between several languages, in fact I think they're a pretty poor investment after a certain count. When learning Obj-C I didn't get much out of it. I like several Swift idioms, but it was hardly worth it to learn a language for that. In contrast I finished an architecture course recently that I expect will bring me 10x value of knowing both of the above languages. Please see my…

What's the architecture course? I've been meaning to move from learning languages and APIs to learning more "lasting" things.

Re: Ask HN: What is the state of C++ vs. Rust?

#82

Post by EpicEng »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #45
blub wrote: post #18

Wrong place to ask the question. HN has a high proportion of people with an unusual interest in trying out programming languages and I would say the average visitor doesn't particularly like C++. From my point of view, Rust doesn't offer any benefits that would justify a switch. I would lose a lot of experience, libraries, a mature stable platform and job opportunities in exchange for more memory safety - something t…

> I would lose a lot of experience, libraries, a mature stable platform and job opportunities in exchange for more memory safety - something that's not a particularly pressing issue for me. May i ask why memory issues are not a pressing issue for you? having to hunt down memory corruptions / access to dangling pointer / memory leaks is a pretty frequent occupation for me (as a C/C++ developer). There are tools like v…

Probably because people with experience know how to handle these things up front so that they don't occur. I've been writing C and C++ for a decade now and for the last 6 years or so i have had very few issues which stem from any of the things you mention.

Re: Ask HN: What is the state of C++ vs. Rust?

#83

Post by EpicEng »

kibwen wrote: post #51
hacker_9 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvoted because no references to back up anything you are saying. I also tried doing a quick search on stackoverflow jobs and only got back 5 results [1]. [1] http://stackoverflow.com/jobs?sort=i&searchTerm=rust

The "Friends of Rust" page here lists organizations who have voluntarily chosen to advertise their production usage of Rust: https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/friends.html Furthermore, I attend Rust meetups all over the country and invariably meet people using Rust for various tasks at their job, even if their company doesn't choose to deliberately advertise itself as a Rust shop. We also have a large internal list of…

>Furthermore, I attend Rust meetups all over the country and invariably meet people using Rust for various tasks at their job, even if their company doesn't choose to deliberately advertise itself as a Rust shop.

Shocking that you would find people using rust at rust meetups. I'm sure they're a good representation of the programming sector as a whole.

Re: Ask HN: What is the state of C++ vs. Rust?

#84

Post by kibwen »

EpicEng wrote: post #83
kibwen wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "Friends of Rust" page here lists organizations who have voluntarily chosen to advertise their production usage of Rust: https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/friends.html Furthermore, I attend Rust meetups all over the country and invariably meet people using Rust for various tasks at their job, even if their company doesn't choose to deliberately advertise itself as a Rust shop. We also have a large internal list of…

>Furthermore, I attend Rust meetups all over the country and invariably meet people using Rust for various tasks at their job, even if their company doesn't choose to deliberately advertise itself as a Rust shop. Shocking that you would find people using rust at rust meetups. I'm sure they're a good representation of the programming sector as a whole.

No need to be so dismissive, my friend. The parent poster asked for references of people using Rust professionally, and I can confirm that I have spoken to many who do.

Re: Ask HN: What is the state of C++ vs. Rust?

#85

Post by quicknir »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #45
blub wrote: post #18

Wrong place to ask the question. HN has a high proportion of people with an unusual interest in trying out programming languages and I would say the average visitor doesn't particularly like C++. From my point of view, Rust doesn't offer any benefits that would justify a switch. I would lose a lot of experience, libraries, a mature stable platform and job opportunities in exchange for more memory safety - something t…

> I would lose a lot of experience, libraries, a mature stable platform and job opportunities in exchange for more memory safety - something that's not a particularly pressing issue for me. May i ask why memory issues are not a pressing issue for you? having to hunt down memory corruptions / access to dangling pointer / memory leaks is a pretty frequent occupation for me (as a C/C++ developer). There are tools like v…

In legacy codebases, this is common, and I agree this is very painful. But in modern C++, it's pretty easy to write code that doesn't leak or dangle references. Don't use new, don't use delete; no memory leaks (barring cycles w/ shared_ptr). Avoid raw pointers in favor of references, and there are only a couple of rare cases where you can have something dangle. In addition, the new sanitizers (asan, msan), do what valgrind does, but are about 10 times faster, that is they only slow your code down 2-3x. So you should be running it on your unit tests on a nightly basis, further catching any bad memory issues. On a green field project, you can write code like this and have processes like this from day one, and memory safety is not going to be something you spend much time on.

I've worked on C++ codebases where I just never spent any time on this stuff, at all.

Re: Ask HN: What is the state of C++ vs. Rust?

#86

Post by quicknir »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #45
blub wrote: post #18

Wrong place to ask the question. HN has a high proportion of people with an unusual interest in trying out programming languages and I would say the average visitor doesn't particularly like C++. From my point of view, Rust doesn't offer any benefits that would justify a switch. I would lose a lot of experience, libraries, a mature stable platform and job opportunities in exchange for more memory safety - something t…

> I would lose a lot of experience, libraries, a mature stable platform and job opportunities in exchange for more memory safety - something that's not a particularly pressing issue for me. May i ask why memory issues are not a pressing issue for you? having to hunt down memory corruptions / access to dangling pointer / memory leaks is a pretty frequent occupation for me (as a C/C++ developer). There are tools like v…

In legacy codebases, this is common, and I agree this is very painful. But in modern C++, it's pretty easy to write code that doesn't leak or dangle references. Don't use new, don't use delete; no memory leaks (barring cycles w/ shared_ptr). Avoid raw pointers in favor of references, and there are only a couple of rare cases where you can have something dangle. In addition, the new sanitizers (asan, msan), do what valgrind does, but are about 10 times faster, that is they only slow your code down 2-3x. So you should be running it on your unit tests on a nightly basis, further catching any bad memory issues. On a green field project, you can write code like this and have processes like this from day one, and memory safety is not going to be something you spend much time on.

I've worked on C++ codebases where I just never spent any time on this stuff, at all.

Re: Ask HN: What is the state of C++ vs. Rust?

#87

Post by sitkack »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #45
blub wrote: post #18

Wrong place to ask the question. HN has a high proportion of people with an unusual interest in trying out programming languages and I would say the average visitor doesn't particularly like C++. From my point of view, Rust doesn't offer any benefits that would justify a switch. I would lose a lot of experience, libraries, a mature stable platform and job opportunities in exchange for more memory safety - something t…

> I would lose a lot of experience, libraries, a mature stable platform and job opportunities in exchange for more memory safety - something that's not a particularly pressing issue for me. May i ask why memory issues are not a pressing issue for you? having to hunt down memory corruptions / access to dangling pointer / memory leaks is a pretty frequent occupation for me (as a C/C++ developer). There are tools like v…

And it sounds like he works in the auto industry. This is pretty depressing that the paycheck weighs more heavily than the safety factor. Toyota killed people with their bad code.

Re: Ask HN: What is the state of C++ vs. Rust?

#88

Post by sitkack »

fiedzia wrote: post #46

Features and libraries aside, Rust (compiler and language) has 6-week release schedule, open and well-working update process and 0 decades of backward compatibility to satisfy. I don't see C++ improving on that anytime soon.

Rust has 0.1 decades of backward compatibility to satisfy.

Re: Ask HN: What is the state of C++ vs. Rust?

#89

Post by pslam »

hacker_9 wrote: post #35
pslam wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* can I get a good job programming in this? Without moving to another country or continent. Yes, there are many large companies which are either actively deploying Rust, or planning to. Easily found if you search. * is my industry showing interest in it? Yes: security, high reliability, availability and safety oriented industries. Any industry looking to get themselves out of the entrenchment of C/C++ but still needs…

Downvoted because no references to back up anything you are saying. I also tried doing a quick search on stackoverflow jobs and only got back 5 results [1]. [1] http://stackoverflow.com/jobs?sort=i&searchTerm=rust

This is not wikipedia, and we don't need [Citation Needed] for everything we say. As you point out yourself, you can easily find at least 5 results. You can also easily find references for everything else I say.

The standard here is not to LMGTFY every few words.

Re: Ask HN: What is the state of C++ vs. Rust?

#90

Post by bjourne »

C is still significantly faster than Rust which follows that C++ is too. So unless Rust is able to produce binaries on all major platforms that are as fast as C++, people who need to squeeze out as much performance as possible are not going to drop the language.
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