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Comment by xurukefi | Hacker News Reader

I'm a bit hesitant to believe that in the future low level systems programming will be done using languages like Rust, Nim or Zig. I would really love to see that but the programmers I know in that area are very reluctant to accept any additional layer between them and the hardware. It's not even just low level systems programming, but basically any large project with some sort of performance constraints still seems to stick to C++.

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Nim is inherently higher-level compared to C, so I understand your point. But how does e.g. Rust or Zig interpose additional layers between the programmer and the hardware? It's not like they introduce complicated runtimes or have expensive FFI. Rust in particular is receiving lots of interest for security-conscious and/or performance-critical projects (browsers, operating systems, cryptography, container technologies, HFT-related stuff). I think that speaks volumes as to Rust's capabilities in this area.

All the layers that I see Rust and Zig are introducing have to do with the compiler. And if advanced compilation is a “layer” then Mr. zero-cost-abstractions C++ shouldn’t throw stones.

Linus Torlvads on why C and not something else (2012) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShbP3OpASA&t=20m45s

C´s success is an effect of UNIX's adoption.

Outside Bell Labs, operating systems were being written in safer systems programming languages, and one of the reasons why Unisys still has enough customers that care to pay for ClearPath MCP, which has a security level no UNIX clone is capable of, thanks NEWP.

Could you explain what additional layer is between me and the hardware when using Rust vs using C? I've written a lot of Rust, and a lot of C, and I can't figure out what you're referring to here.

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