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C Is Best (2025)

sqlite.org

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Re: C Is Best (2025)

#51

Post by nu11ptr »

I am a pretty serious "Rustacean", but I like to think "for the right reasons". A rewrite in Rust of the main project would make very little sense, unless there is some objective the project wants that can't be met with C (see below). This person presents a well thought out case on why it makes little sense to rewrite, especially in the final section. Rust is great for many things, but when you have something old that is already so well tested and accessible on all sorts of obscure platforms, it makes little sense to rewrite, and the likely result would be more bugs, not less, at least in the short term.

All that said, some have found reasons to rewrite in Rust, and are currently working on that: https://turso.tech/blog/introducing-limbo-a-complete-rewrite...

Re: C Is Best (2025)

#53

Post by jll29 »

publicdebates wrote: post #37

> Rust needs to mature a little more, stop changing so fast, and move further toward being old and boring. One of the very strange things about C is that it is designed by a committee that is inherently conservative and prefers to not add new features, especially if they have any chance of breaking any compatibility. This seems necessary before Rust ever becomes an old, boring language. But I don't see Rust ever goin…

> Rust's philosophy, which is to find the best solution to the problems it's trying to solve, at any cost, including breaking compatibility, at least to some degree.

But the Rust team found a great way to avoid breaking backward compatibility: old code gets automatically compiled by the old version of the compiler, whereas more recent code is treated with the latest version of the compiler.

That is much better IMHO than carrying that old baggage along in the language that e.g. the C++ folks struggle with, where every half-decade a pile of additive changes get piled on the previous version of the language, and nobody can clean up the old mess.

Re: C Is Best (2025)

#56

Post by alansaber »

baranul wrote: post #34

Every project and programmer shouldn't feel they have to justify their choice not to use Rust (or Zig), who seem to be strangely and disproportionately pushed on Hacker News and specific other social media platforms. This includes the pressure, though a bit less in recent years, to use OOP. If they are getting good results with C and without OOP, and people like the product, then those from outside the project should…

We (especially management) are trained to always want shiny new thing. Also it's an easy line of dialogue.

Re: C Is Best (2025)

#57

Post by nicoburns »

lordnacho wrote: post #33

The bit about why not OOP seems a bit old. I think we're past a point where people are going for OOP as the default shape of code. Overall, it makes sense. C is a systems language, and a DB is a system abstraction. You shouldn't need to build a deep hierarchy of abstractions on top of C, just stick with the lego blocks you have. If the project had started in 2016, maybe they would have gone for c++, which is a differ…

> The bit about why not OOP seems a bit old. I think we're past a point where people are going for OOP as the default shape of code.

That section was probably written 20 years ago when Java was all the rage.

Re: C Is Best (2025)

#58

Post by pie_flavor »

baranul wrote: post #34

Every project and programmer shouldn't feel they have to justify their choice not to use Rust (or Zig), who seem to be strangely and disproportionately pushed on Hacker News and specific other social media platforms. This includes the pressure, though a bit less in recent years, to use OOP. If they are getting good results with C and without OOP, and people like the product, then those from outside the project should…

It should not be strange that a tool which is better in every way and makes your code less buggy by default has its praises sung by most of the people who use it. It would be odd to go around saying 'electric drills are strangely and disproportionately pushed at Home Depot over the good old hand auger', and even if I don't work at your contracting company I'd be slightly unnerved about you working on my house.

Re: C Is Best (2025)

#59

Post by misnome »

baranul wrote: post #34

Every project and programmer shouldn't feel they have to justify their choice not to use Rust (or Zig), who seem to be strangely and disproportionately pushed on Hacker News and specific other social media platforms. This includes the pressure, though a bit less in recent years, to use OOP. If they are getting good results with C and without OOP, and people like the product, then those from outside the project should…

> strangely and disproportionately pushed on Hacker News

There is literally nothing strange or disproportionate. It's incredibly obvious that new languages, that were designed by people who found older languages lacking, are of interest to groups of people interested in new applications of technology and who want to use their new languages.

> then those from outside the project shouldn't really have any say on it. It's their project.

People outside the project are allowed to say whatever the hell they want, the project doesn't have to listen.

Re: C Is Best (2025)

#60

Post by a-dub »

i haven't seen any rust projects yet that maximize embeddability, portability, space and transparency. maybe an argument could be made for the linux kernel stuff, but nothing like a sqlite that gets compiled and included in a million things on a million platforms ranging from high level interpreter wrappers on general purpose computers to teeny microcontrollers where the operating system is a library or some jump targets in rom.

that said, just because c is best for sqlite today, doesn't mean c is best for you or what you're trying to do.

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