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Comment by abiox | Hacker News Reader

apologies, but i don't quite follow. what do you refer to by 'class of systems'?

one common sentiment promulgated by rust evangelists is, for example, that go is 'not a systems language' because it has a GC. however, this definitional exclusion doesn't seem to align with (evidently broader) historical use of the term 'systems language'.

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Real real-time embedded systems, low-level operating system components, etc. are some kind of things that GC languages exclude completely, so by definition, the subset of "system programming" set is eliminated from use with ie. Go but not from Rust. Consequently, Rust has wider class of systems which makes it a true system programming language as C and C++.

"system programming" is not composed entirely of things where GC presents a non-trivial problem.

But 100% > 50%.

i don't quite follow what you're trying to say.

Simple put: Go ISN'T a true systems programming language because it simple does not work for every and ALL type of systems.

Yes, it may work with some type of systems, but this does not make it a systems language. If you don't want to accept this fact, then you have bigger problems or you reality is narrow.

Maybe this can help you see through your bubble: https://github.com/CppCon/CppCon2017/blob/master/Presentatio...

Another way to say it: The set of systems programming tasks for which Rust can be used is a superset of that for which Go can be used. Go cannot be used for real time code, as it does not provide latency guarantees. Go cannot be used for many embedded (microcontroller) systems as the runtime is required.

I've gotten Rust code to run on an ATSAMD21G18 Arm Cortex M0 (Adafruit Feather board). That board has 256K flash and 32K RAM. Go executables can't even fit in the program flash! Considering the sheer number of systems that have microcontrollers in them somewhere it would be very hard to call a language that doesn't support them a "systems" language. Maybe "applications language" would be more appropriate.

oh, i see. so you were pointlessly making a some kind of fallacy argument. no "true" systems programming language, indeed.

Seriously? Fallacy? That is really not wanting to understand things how they are. You should really go back to textbooks and try to understand hardware.

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