Goodbye, Rust. I wish you success but I'm back to C++ (sorry, it is a rant)

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Rust Adoption and Job Market

  • Many commenters see Rust as still young; adoption is slow but not a death knell. Comparisons are made to how long C++ standards took to spread.
  • Rust jobs are perceived as fewer and more niche than C++: often crypto, trading, specialized infra, or defense. This deters some who want broader or less specialized work.
  • Others report growing Rust usage at large vendors (cloud providers, OS vendors) and say substantial Rust is being written even if not visible in public job ads.
  • Some view Rust as a strong “talent magnet” for high-caliber developers; others are content to be “COBOL/C++ people” long term.

Rust vs C++: Safety, Productivity, Refactoring

  • Broad agreement that Rust delivers stronger memory safety than C/C++ and is attractive where reliability and security matter.
  • Dispute over productivity: some find Rust slow for initial prototyping and large refactors; others say the compiler and type system make big changes easier and safer than in C++, Go, or dynamic languages.
  • Several argue C++ is still preferred where iteration speed and “getting it done” trump safety, especially in games and some systems areas.

Ease of Use, Syntax, and Learning Curve

  • Some dislike Rust syntax (lifetimes, turbofish, annotations) and crates culture; others find it clean and well designed.
  • Complaints that Rust’s “surface area” (language + ecosystem) makes it hard to pick up again after a pause.
  • Counterpoint: for developers already close to hardware and manual memory management, the borrow checker becomes intuitive and a net productivity gain.

Use Cases and Alternative “Safe” Languages

  • Rust is seen as a strong C++ alternative for OS kernels, browsers, firmware, high‑performance backends, and network services.
  • Ada/SPARK is cited as more mature for high‑integrity systems, but hampered by hiring and ecosystem; Rust is winning mindshare despite being newer.
  • Go is praised for simplicity and fast iteration in web/backend work but viewed as less suitable for low‑level or high‑load systems due to GC.
  • Swift, D, Carbon, Odin, Zig, V, etc. are mentioned as other attempts at “better C++,” with varying trade‑offs.

Popularity, Legacy Code, and Policy Pressure

  • Debate over whether “superior tech” must win: legacy C/C++ codebases, ecosystems, and developer supply strongly favor incumbents.
  • Some expect gradual replacement of unsafe code as CVEs and government pushes for memory-safe languages accumulate; others think massive rewrites are too risky and expensive.
  • Popularity is criticized as an overly dominant criterion, but many accept it as decisive for career choices.

Tooling, Ecosystem, and Binary Size

  • Rust tooling (cargo, rust‑analyzer, diagnostics, linting) is widely praised and contrasted with C++’s fragmented toolchains.
  • Ecosystem breadth is seen as both a strength and a cognitive burden; choosing among many crates and keeping up is nontrivial.
  • Embedded/firmware developers complain about Rust’s relatively large standard library footprint and statically linked binaries; some work around this (busybox‑style binaries), but see it as a real disadvantage versus C/C++.