C++ complicated compared to Rust? They offer roughly the same features and both are complex languages if you want to understand what is really going on.
Rust is a very good language that competes with C++. The main feature it brings to the table isn't simplicity (Rust, like C++, isn't simple at all), but the borrow checker.
Please avoid making comparisons between languages if you don't know them (as you claim).
That's a bit misleading though. Yes, C is very small - but that doesn't mean it's magically easy to understand. It's size has a huge consequence; the language doesn't do much for you, so it's up to you to fill in the gaps, e.g. correctly manage memory
Programming web apps and lob software in C might be tough. As would trying to program systems software in Python or Java.
I was going to compare how many pages the rust standard has, and compare it to the C standard (plus 20% for the "correctly manage memory" that you pointed out as something extremely complicated). http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1570.pdf
Anyway.. C is a rather simple language. No matter what the opinion of rust programmers is.
Please don't respond to this post. At least not with the bog standard "undefined" "unsafe/memory" and other shallow conceptions.
Sorry. "correctly manage memory" in C is not 20% more problematic, it's like dividing by 0, infinity% more problematic.
Nobody has gotten it right. Ever. Nobody.
The Mozilla team switched from C to C++ trying to get memory right. Failed. Then they tried GC. Failed. Then they tried to go back to manual. Sill failed.
So they wrote their own language to solve the problem--Rust.
Jury is still out, but the situation is a lot better than when Mozilla started.
Still Mozilla software, including Firefox, run at more than 80% in C++ and are fully usable right now.
It is also the case of probably almost all the software you see on your own desktop right now... Most of them are C++.
Meaning, all considered, your notion of "failed" is pretty relative and opiniated.
The work on ANSI C started in 1983, 11 years after C came out. And it took 6 years! to complete.
If Rust is as sucesful as C was during its 11 first years, Rust will most likely get a formal spec eventually. But don't hold your breath because it's going to take a loooong time to get there.
Its simplicity is at the same time its own worst enemy, in that it pushes down all the difficulties, complexities and verbosity for you to manage yourself. Perhaps an extreme comparison but just to show that simpler language doesn't always yield a simpler program.
If you learn C, you'll find that most used languages are compatible with C way of thinking. You can pick up C#, Java, Javascript, Python, PHP with ease as you kind of think in the same way.
While Rust, the language might not be terribly complicated, you have a totally different paradigm, the restriction on variables and the borrowing system makes it totally different than the languages people are used to, to the point that for beginners is totally unintuitive.
You can't just declare a variable, initialize it, pass it to a function and get a result back.
You can't have self references in a structure.
No, siree, as a beginner learning Rust you have to do a lot of complicated dancing around the borrow checker.
Comming from C like languages I find even functional languages like F# easier to pick up. Because they feel more intuitive. Unlike Rust you kind of feel what kind of code you need to write to get a workable result.
Right now I feel that the only advantage of Rust over other safe by default languages is speed. You can use low level constructs and unsafe features like raw pointers in C#, but the garbage collector for the safe code slows it down.
I don't think garbage collected languages can ever be as fast as Rust.
Reference counting like in Swift is another way to provide simplicity, but I see Swift is even slower than garbage collected languages.
So if your use case needs both performance and safety, Rust is your best bet.
It seems that from simplicity, performance, safety you can only pick two at once.
Microsoft Research is working on a language inspired by Rust. I'm curious if they can come up with something as safe but easier to use. I wouldn't bet on it. They aren't convinced of the outcome since they recommended to write or rewrite parts of their software in Rust instead of waiting for the new magical language.
A good thing from Microsoft evaluating Rust to use in their huge code base is they learned about a few weak points and are making recommendation to Rust team.
One side effect of Microsoft embracing Rust might be that other corporations like Google and Oracle might avoid it to distance themselves from Microsoft.
https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/refs/heads/master...
With Rust none of these things are issues and we get to actually spend time solving problems in the language instead of just understanding the language. Yes, C is as simpler language, but it's got no safety rails, and when you're a beginner at systems programming it's nice to have a friendly compiler who can help you pinpoint errors rather than to be shown "SEGMENTATION FAULT" and feel like you're on your own.
For example, adding dependencies. And this one thing makes a lot of practical tasks simpler too, because there is a whole swathe of code you simply don't need to implement at all.
What's simpler: Implementing a HashMap in C, or `use std::collections::HashMap`? If you really need to understand what's going on under the hood then yes C might be simpler. But when was the last time you needed to inspect the details of your HashMap?
There are also things like C's declaration syntax, which is anything but simple. And header files (even for your own code).
System Programming is the custom tailoring of data conditioning to a particular set of circumstances and then taking responsibility for the benefits and consequences of that those choices that differentiates systems programming from the other broad categories of program construction.
Rust is a fine language if it fits your use case, and you feel as though the purported benefits of the ‘borrow checker’ assist you in writing quality code, but if you just want a programming language that provides a large library of pre-written solutions, then the difference between language is dependent only on use case and usage requirements. Saying Rust is simpler than C because you can use a pre-written HashMap implementation is ridiculous, because you can do the same thing in C (I mean use someone else’s HashMap). But if ‘systems programming’ is the area of interest, being able to inspect/implement the actual HashMap is a key concern, and just dismissing that aspect is not an acceptable proposition.
Don't gatekeep. Rolling your own containers has no bearing on whether or not the language is a systems programming language.
I'm using it to do real time audio and graphics, but I don't have the time to hand roll my own data structures because I have a demanding day job and other responsibilities. I still get to have the benefit of using a fast, modern, bare metal language.
> Saying Rust is simpler than C because you can use a pre-written HashMap implementation is ridiculous
No it's not. HashMap is literally there in std::collections to import and use. You don't need to find a library, know about the linker, etc.
Rust makes working in this domain so much easier than C and C++. You can go from zero to productive in a reasonable amount of time.
C++ has a hash map in its standard Library since 10 years.
> You can go from zero to productive in a reasonable amount of time.
That's definitively a very WRONG assumption. Anyone starting to use Rust, even with 10 years of C++ experience, will spend from HOURS to DAYS fighting the borrow checker.
It is not "zero to productive", Rust is not easy to learn, nor productive for beginner.
Is it however worth the effort ? I believe it is. Especially if you are looking for a language providing you safety first.
OP was talking about C, not C++/STL.
> Anyone starting to use Rust, even with 10 years of C++ experience, will spend from HOURS to DAYS fighting the borrow checker.
You might have learned Rust pre-1.0 or non lexical lifetimes. They've made a tremendous amount of work to improve the language and make it beginner friendly.
A few weeks ago I watched one of my coworkers implement a simple toy state machine app after having just read a tutorial. The compiler literally hand holds you now.
The meme that Rust is hard needs to die.
I still use Rust almost every week for personal projects, I enjoy it and I still would not qualify it as quick "zero to productive". It still fall behind C++ in term of productivity for me.
Many things that few lines of C++ allow you to do in few lines requires mental gymnastic to wrap around the borrow checker, strict typing and Rust error report system in 10-20 lines.
Comparatively speaking, I program in C++ since 15 years and in Rust since 3 years. Still, everything I do in rust takes between 1.5X to 3X more times to do than in C++, even if the tooling is better.
I know I am going to make enemies saying that with the number of Rust fanboys on YC, but... this is my experience.
And it is not a surprising experience.... Anyone that programmed in OCaml or strict typing language like ATS already experienced that... The strict typing gives you runtime safety and make your program "just" run (less bug-prone) compared to Weaker typed language....
But... it has a cost... like everything... And the cost is much more mental gymnastic... meaning time... meaning less productivity.
However we aren't comparing languages here but standard libraries.
If we introduce modules in C instead of header files and add some simple data structures and algorithms to stdlib, I can see C being simpler.
C++ has data structures in its standard library and will have modules starting with C++20.
Rust:
let mut map = HashMap::new();
map.insert("foo", "bar");
println!("Value: {}", map.get("baz").unwrap_or("<none>"));
Dictionary<string, string> dict = new Dictionary<string, string>();
dict.Add("foo", "bar");
try {
Console.WriteLine("Value: {0}", dict["baz"]);
} catch (KeyNotFoundException) {
Console.WriteLine("Value: <none>.");
}
[1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.collectio...
var dict = new Dictionary<string, string> { ["foo"] = "bar" };
Console.WriteLine($"Value: {dict.GetValueOrDefault("baz", " <none>.")}");
Stuff like build systems, setting up dependencies, understanding memory allocation etc...
Rust has its own steep learning curve but C is only really simple in terms of a language, not the experience of using the language.
Also in my experiences the rust compiler errors are extremely helpful, especially compared to the c++ template stuff.