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Comment by kibwen | Hacker News Reader

Rust certainly doesn't make it impossible to write bad code. What it does do is nudge you towards writing good code to a noticeably appreciable degree, which is laudable compared to the state of the industry at large.

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Rust is just a tool. It’s as fallible as any other tool. I wish we took it off the pedestal and treated it as such.

Are all tools equal in all dimensions or can they be compared for fitness of purpose?

A hand saw, a table saw and a SawStop are all tools, but they have different characteristics even though they all are meant to cut the same wood.

Ada, C, and lisp are all tools, but they have different characteristics even though they are all meant to cut through the same problems.

...yes?

A tool is a tool. I didn’t realize I needed to spell it out.

Cloudflare used a tool, broke parts of the internet.

I feel like you're attacking a strawman here. Of course you can write unreliable software in Rust. I'm not aware of anyone who says you can't. The point is not that it's a magic talisman that makes your software good, the point is that it helps you to make your software good in ways other languages (in particular C/C++ which are the primary point of comparison for Rust) do not. That's all.

> The point is not that it's a magic talisman that makes your software good, the point is that it helps you to make your software good in ways other languages (in particular C/C++ which are the primary point of comparison for Rust) do not.

Citation needed.

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