Rust Isn't the Future of Systems Programming – It's Just the Hype Cycle • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by queenkjuul » Tue, Nov 25, 2025, 6:16 AM UTC

Rochus wrote: post #39

queenkjuul wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

I suppose, but i tried to learn C before i tried to learn anything else. If it had been my only option, i wouldn't have stuck with programming (in fact i didn't, several years passed between trying to learn C and successfully learning Typescript)

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

#42

Post by aw1621107 » Tue, Nov 25, 2025, 7:13 AM UTC

wakawaka28 wrote: post #40

aw1621107 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 com…

> I'm inclined to agree with him. I've had comments mass downvoted here and on Reddit over Rust criticism.

I mean, I'm not trying to say that (even good, unfortunately) Rust criticism will never be at risk of downvotes/flagging; I'm just saying that Rust criticism is not guaranteed to garner downvotes/flags - or at least, not to the extent implied in the particular wording. That's not to comment on your specific situation, either.

> It's not even symmetrical either, because the threshold to be able to downvote is 500 points.

If anything, shouldn't that weigh in favor of comments being upvoted, since there's no threshold to vote something up?

> 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.

IIRC the vote display on comments has a floor of -4, but further downvotes continue to affect your karma nevertheless.

I had the impression that there's a bit of the opposite at play as well - upvotes beyond some threshold stop contributing 1:1 to your total karma. Not sure if that's just my faulty memory though.

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

#43

Post by baranul » Sun, Nov 30, 2025, 3:42 PM UTC

akagusu wrote: post #22

wakawaka28 wrote: post #20

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.

Sadly, this appears to be true. For whatever strange reasons, Rust (and Zig) are glazed and hyped beyond any sense and way out of proportion to their language rankings (see TIOBE)[1]. Rust is not even in the TIOBE top 10. Zig is barely in their top 50.

These two languages look like they have a weird kind of "protected and special status" on HN. Other programming language don't get anything like the push and special treatment that these do.

[1]: https://archive.md/sJRyf (TIOBE Index Novemeber 2025)