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Matt Godbolt sold me on Rust by showing me C++

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611 points LorenDB | 2 comments | 06 May 25 17:51 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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choeger ◴[07 May 25 06:42 UTC] No.43912866[source]▶
All this has been known in the PL design community for decades if not half a century by now.

Two things are incredibly frustrating when it comes to safety in software engineering:

1. The arrogance that "practitioners" have against "theorists" (everyone with a PhD in programming languages)

2. The slowness of the adoption of well-tested and thoroughly researched language concepts (think of Haskell type classes, aka, Rust traits)

I like that Rust can pick good concepts and design coherent language from them without inventing its own "pragmatic" solution that breaks horribly in some use cases that some "practitioners" deem "too theoretical."

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blub ◴[07 May 25 14:31 UTC] No.43916215[source]▶
If the practitioners haven’t adopted what you’re offering for 50+ years, that thing can’t be good.

Rust is also struggling with its “too theoretical” concepts by the way. The attempts of the community to gaslight the practitioners that the concepts are in fact easy to learn and straightforward are only enjoying mild success, if I may call it that.

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1. ordu ◴[07 May 25 20:36 UTC] No.43920318[source]▶
> If the practitioners haven’t adopted what you’re offering for 50+ years, that thing can’t be good.

I wouldn't trust opinion of practitioners. Not after they have chosen javascript and, God forbid, PHP. Practitioners choose not what is inherently good, but what is popular. It is a very practical choice that brings a lot of benefits, so it is just practitioners being practitioners. It can be good or bad, I don't care now, it doesn't matter for my argument. The issue that a good thing can be overlooked by practitioners for decades, because there is nothing popular giving them this thing.

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2. j_w ◴[07 May 25 21:11 UTC] No.43920601[source]▶
But being popular can be very important for practitioners. How else are you going to hire other practitioners?