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Rust Isn't the Future of Systems Programming – It's Just the Hype Cycle

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Re: Rust Isn't the Future of Systems Programming – It's Just the Hype Cycle

#31
post #22

Why is this flagged?

Because there is a coordinated effort on HN to suppress any dissent view on certain topics. Rust is one of these topics. If you want to be flagged and down voted, just write a critic about Rust. Even tell about this is a motive to be down voted.

Ok let's discuss the article. Can you give example, from the article, you like?

Re: Rust Isn't the Future of Systems Programming – It's Just the Hype Cycle

#32

Why is this flagged?

Presumably because it's LLM-generated, as other comments here are pointing out.

How does anyone know that? Seems like an unfalsifiable accusation you can hurl at anything to dismiss it.

Re: Rust Isn't the Future of Systems Programming – It's Just the Hype Cycle

#33
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there is a coordinated effort on HN to suppress any dissent view on certain topics. Rust is one of these topics. If you want to be flagged and down voted, just write a critic about Rust. Even tell about this is a motive to be down voted.

> If you want to be flagged and down voted, just write a critic about Rust. Nonsense. It's not all that hard to find well-received stuff on HN critical of Rust (e.g., from a quick search there's [0, 1, 2] and plenty more, especially around async and/or deps). The key is to write substantive/thoughtful/constructive criticism. In fact, that applies in general - substantive/thoughtful/constructive articles/comments are…

Much more superficial stuff flies on this site and even gets hundreds of upvotes. You haven't explained why this is flagged.

Re: Rust Isn't the Future of Systems Programming – It's Just the Hype Cycle

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to be flagged and down voted, just write a critic about Rust. Nonsense. It's not all that hard to find well-received stuff on HN critical of Rust (e.g., from a quick search there's [0, 1, 2] and plenty more, especially around async and/or deps). The key is to write substantive/thoughtful/constructive criticism. In fact, that applies in general - substantive/thoughtful/constructive articles/comments are…

Much more superficial stuff flies on this site and even gets hundreds of upvotes. You haven't explained why this is flagged.

> Much more superficial stuff flies on this site and even gets hundreds of upvotes.

Sure, but the fact that one thing gets one kind of reception but another thing gets another tells you little since HN is not a monolith. Different people read different things, have different thresholds for flagging stuff, so on and so forth.

> You haven't explained why this is flagged.

My comment was not an attempt to explain why the post was flagged in the first place?

It's not like I can give a definitive reason for its flagging either, since a) I don't know the precise manner in which HN's software determines whether something is flagged or not, b) I can't read the minds of everyone who flagged the article, let alone try to determine whether their reason for flagging was "valid" (assuming I'm even qualified to make that determination), and c) I have no idea if the moderators manually flagged this article. I can make guesses, sure, but it's not like my guesses would be worth any more than yours.

If you see something is flagged and think it should not be, the best way to try to resolve the issue is to either vouch for it, or if that doesn't work, email the moderators.

Re: Rust Isn't the Future of Systems Programming – It's Just the Hype Cycle

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much more superficial stuff flies on this site and even gets hundreds of upvotes. You haven't explained why this is flagged.

> Much more superficial stuff flies on this site and even gets hundreds of upvotes. Sure, but the fact that one thing gets one kind of reception but another thing gets another tells you little since HN is not a monolith. Different people read different things, have different thresholds for flagging stuff, so on and so forth. > You haven't explained why this is flagged. My comment was not an attempt to explain why the…

I don't think I have enough points to vouch for anything. The rules about how many points are required to do things seem to promote a hive mind phenomenon.

If you're not trying to explain why this thing is flagged, or at least why it isn't flagged, idk why you are in this thread. But it's all good.

Re: Rust Isn't the Future of Systems Programming – It's Just the Hype Cycle

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably because it's LLM-generated, as other comments here are pointing out.

How does anyone know that? Seems like an unfalsifiable accusation you can hurl at anything to dismiss it.

If it helps, GPTZero rates the text as 99% AI-generated. In addition, the whole article has a patter that's very typical of LLM-writing, fond of short phrases and reversals. You might also consider that the medium page it's pulled from posts short daily articles on programming, full of surface-level takes on language and technology choice without going into serious technical detail or providing biographical detail about the author, their work, or their projects. Or, most clearly, you might notice that those articles are replete with ASCII flowcharts--something a human writer would almost certainly not bother with in favor of just drawing them, but which is very easy for an LLM to output.

All of this points quite clearly to this being LLM-generated. But, as I pointed out in my other comment, as have others above, it's just not well argued. The points are shallow and don't adequately support the claims made. It looks to me very much like someone churning out posts on surface-level topics by prompting an LLM, either not having the expertise to tell the quality of the argument or just not bothering.

Re: Rust Isn't the Future of Systems Programming – It's Just the Hype Cycle

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Much more superficial stuff flies on this site and even gets hundreds of upvotes. Sure, but the fact that one thing gets one kind of reception but another thing gets another tells you little since HN is not a monolith. Different people read different things, have different thresholds for flagging stuff, so on and so forth. > You haven't explained why this is flagged. My comment was not an attempt to explain why the…

I don't think I have enough points to vouch for anything. The rules about how many points are required to do things seem to promote a hive mind phenomenon. If you're not trying to explain why this thing is flagged, or at least why it isn't flagged, idk why you are in this thread. But it's all good.

> I don't think I have enough points to vouch for anything.

Based on this [0] (and a few other random comments search engines pulled up) the points threshold for vouching is supposedly 31. It does appear that I misunderstood the vouching functionality, though, since apparently it's supposed to counteract [dead] posts, not [flagged]. My mistake!

> The rules about how many points are required to do things seem to promote a hive mind phenomenon.

As with many things, it's a tradeoff. Having a points threshold also makes it harder to abuse new accounts to manipulate flags/votes/etc., so there's no free lunch here.

> If you're not trying to explain why this thing is flagged, or at least why it isn't flagged, idk why you are in this thread.

My intent was very specifically to push back against the claim that Rust criticism is a surefire way to get downvoted/flagged. The tl;dr is that good criticism of Rust is well-received, and this article is not a good critique and so it's not all that surprising that it was not well-received.

[0]: https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/blob/m...

Re: Rust Isn't the Future of Systems Programming – It's Just the Hype Cycle

#38
post #24

I find the comparison about being good for newcomers rather interesting. I would say none of them are easy for beginners. I don't see where C(++) can shine here. For a beginner into systems programming Go would be much easier as example. And if it's about programming in general then there are many, many more languages to choose from that are all easier to learn than C(++) and Rust.

> I don't see where C(++) can shine here [..] Go would be much easier There is a world of difference between the complexity of C and C++. C is in principle quite easy to understand (besides some syntactic quirks), similar to Turbo Pascal back in the day. Go, on the other hand, has various features that are not so easy for beginners to understand (e.g., interfaces with all their rules, or value vs. pointer receivers w…

Personally, coming from higher level languages (Python, TS, Java, C#) I've found Go by far the easiest to get productive in.

You're probably right that for trivial examples C is, in principle, the simplest to learn and understand. But in reality, non-trivial C projects come with complex build systems, makefiles, macros, endless compiler flags... I've found it pretty hard to, for example, fork a moderately-sized C project and modify it. Hell sometimes even building it is a challenge when you don't understand make/build system errors and how to set up and configure C projects.

Go, however, i could just get up and running. Simple to use modules, simple to import dependencies, simple to build projects, great centralized documentation. Now granted do i fully understand all the nuances of things like pointer receivers and generics? No, but i don't really understand memory allocation in C either to be quite honest, and I've spent more time trying to understand C in my life than i have Go (please understand: extremely little in both cases)

Rust does seem similarly impenetrable honestly, except that it seems much easier to build and manage Rust projects. But I definitely can't even just read Rust code and get it the way i can Go (or even C)

Re: Rust Isn't the Future of Systems Programming – It's Just the Hype Cycle

#39
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see where C(++) can shine here [..] Go would be much easier There is a world of difference between the complexity of C and C++. C is in principle quite easy to understand (besides some syntactic quirks), similar to Turbo Pascal back in the day. Go, on the other hand, has various features that are not so easy for beginners to understand (e.g., interfaces with all their rules, or value vs. pointer receivers w…

Personally, coming from higher level languages (Python, TS, Java, C#) I've found Go by far the easiest to get productive in. You're probably right that for trivial examples C is, in principle, the simplest to learn and understand. But in reality, non-trivial C projects come with complex build systems, makefiles, macros, endless compiler flags... I've found it pretty hard to, for example, fork a moderately-sized C pro…

Programmers using high-level languages develop models about how programming works, particularly around memory management, type safety, and abstractions. These models don't transfer to C, so they must be "unlearned" to some degree, which research shows is often harder than learning from scratch. Programmers accustomed to Python, TypeScript, or C# face specific conceptual "paradigm shifts" when switching to C such as manual memory management (as you said), pointer discipline and lack of abstraction (you have to take care of many things which the high-level language offered or took care of).

Programming beginners (to whom my statement applied) lack preconceived notions about what programming "should" be like. They build their mental models around C's paradigms from the start, avoiding the cognitive dissonance experienced by those expecting automatic memory management or rich standard libraries and integrated build systems.

Re: Rust Isn't the Future of Systems Programming – It's Just the Hype Cycle

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I have enough points to vouch for anything. The rules about how many points are required to do things seem to promote a hive mind phenomenon. If you're not trying to explain why this thing is flagged, or at least why it isn't flagged, idk why you are in this thread. But it's all good.

> I don't think I have enough points to vouch for anything. Based on this [0] (and a few other random comments search engines pulled up) the points threshold for vouching is supposedly 31. It does appear that I misunderstood the vouching functionality, though, since apparently it's supposed to counteract [dead] posts, not [flagged]. My mistake! > The rules about how many points are required to do things seem to promo…

I'm inclined to agree with him. I've had comments mass downvoted here and on Reddit over Rust criticism. It's not even symmetrical either, because the threshold to be able to downvote is 500 points. I'll never get to that level (or stay there) unless I stick to very milquetoast takes on things. I shouldn't care but it's unfair and annoying. At one point I even lost the theme feature because I made a few unpopular comments in a row and got like 50 downvotes in a short time. The way the votes are tabulated is also confusing. It is not one to one. It's like, the downvoted posts contribute more than the sum total of the downvotes, based on the replies.
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