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Comment by reacharavindh | Hacker News Reader

Learning Go and Rust recently, it feels like Go is aiming to be a better Java(GC, excellent libraries, feature rich std library, fast enough but easier on devs) and Rust is aiming to be a safer C.

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D is aiming to be a better C++

Rust is aiming to be a better and safer C++

Zig is aiming to be a better C

Zig has a good safety story -- in fact, I think it might turn out to better than Rust's -- but it is very different. A language that uses sound methods to guarantee certain kinds of safety (as Rust does) is not necessarily the best way, and it certainly isn't the only way, to write safe code. The handwavy way to explain that is that a language that soundness comes at a cost, and getting rid of 100% of a certain class of bugs might overall be less safe than an approach that gets rid of, say, 98% of that class and can also help reduce bugs outside that class by similar unsound means. I.e. system safety and memory safety are very much not the same thing (although the former is a subset of the latter), and since the goal is system safety, it is unclear exactly how much it is worth paying to soundly eliminate all memory safety bugs.

I agree with the premise that there are multiple measurements for ‘safety’ and I absolutely do not believe Rust’s chosen method is superior to all others, but I’ve seen you get blow back in other threads for these statements before, so I thought I’d toss in some support of the overarching ideas before the long meeting of response come flying in.

Its weird people don't compare Go to Kotlin. It has channels and coroutines. I think Kotlin does better with contexts and I think flows are a really cool addition. There does seem to be a lot there but honestly, it reminds me a lot of Go in its pick up and play nature

Maybe because on the JVM it is a guest language and on LLVM, Kotlin/Native is barely production ready.

Having used Kotlin, I’m now actively switching to Go. I find it much more enjoyable to write. But this is also highly personal opinion. I feel seriously lost in Kotlin’s documentation. Go is a joy to me.

I'd say C++ is a closer point of comparison.

Only if it is a better Java 1.0.

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