Edit: ABI compatibility & two way interop with C seems to be a pretty big selling point!
The comparison shouldn't be with C, it should be with C++, Rust, or Zig.
The place to go is actually the C3 comparison page:
https://c3-lang.org/faq/compare-languages/
There you can see that there are very few items "in C3 but not Rust", for example. Mainly "it's a familiar C-like language".
I am also suspicious of the macro system. I'd like more of an explanation of how it works. Especially how it relates to Zig comptime, and whether it has "hygiene" problems. Hygiene to me means: can a variable name in a macro expansion refer to a variable outside of the macro? (The concern is that this could be accidental.)
The macro cannot insert variables into the caller scope, nor cause the function to return. Mostly it's similar to a static inline function with optionally polymorphic arguments. But it can do some more things as well, but nothing violating hygiene.
There is a space for a C alternative, and Rust ain’t it.
Rust is solving a different problem, that of safety over all else. C3 on the other hand is more akin to developer experience above all else.
If you find something that should be easier to do in C3, that's a bug.
C3 is more complex than C (because of a net increase of features), but it's miles from C++ and Rust in complexity and it compiles as fast or faster than C.
So they should be the same, otherwise it's a bug.
Take into consideration that most Rust programmers rely on https://docs.rs etc rather than Googling something.
https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/programminglanguages_defin...
That seems like it's a potentially interesting signal, but the index implies that it is about adoption.
Looking at the index, it seems like Python has a 2.5x higher rating than C and Java. While I assume that Python is a widely adopted language, this feels wrong in many ways.
But given that they just look at search engine stats, one can explain the higher rating, because Python is often used by novice programmers and tech workers who are not primarily programmers/SWEs.
Python jobs: 0.9
Seems about right, maybe.
Except there's no way PHP (0.09), Ruby (0.07) and Go (0.1) are on the same magnitude as Rust jobs.
So this site doesn't pass the sniff test for me.
If Rust is as good as its evangelists say it is, we won't have to worry about how the stats smell, we'll see it, and it won't rely on some "Cnile" conspiracy to keep it down either.
If your parent is wrong, happy to be corrected. I thought it was interesting that we read the post in completely opposite ways, and I think both readings can be accurate. I based my reading on a vague remembering that I think the parent isn't a fan of Rust, which is fuzzy and also may be wrong!