[sidlls]

This is neat. I'm writing a very badly constructed toy application to get used to Rust, and some of the differences have been interesting to note.

In this case, when I first encountered Rust's enums the first thing that came to mind is the fact that C and C++ both offer the ability to support tagged-unions, but certainly not as a first-class entity and definitely with a lot more cruft, with or without safety checks.

For me the jury is still out on where the best "fit" for Rust is. I really appreciate the enforced safety of Rust for higher-level systems applications programming. I'm not convinced yet it won't just get in the way pointlessly for much lower level programming (especially embedded). Perhaps that's just my relative novice understanding of Rust, though.

[bluejekyll]

It depends, do you want a piece of code that will be more reliable and require less maintenance after development?

Even after more than a year of learning the language I do find that some things take me longer to build, but the end product is far better.

[sidlls]

I can write reliable code requiring less maintenance in C or C++. What you're engaging in is language zealotry. Rust isn't a panacea.

[bluejekyll]

I think you're reading into the comment too much. Rust by definition, will create a safer variant of whatever similar code you write in C or C++. This isn't really debatable, things like bounds checking on arrays, strongly typed error results, thread safe memory sharing semantics. These will absolutely guarantee that in general you will have safer code in Rust.

What I said is that it might take you longer to write it in Rust, than something similar in C/C++, but you won't have some of the guarantees you get from the Rust semantics. So the tradeoff is up to you; write code faster, or write code safer.

[sidlls]

Ah, I see now. Thank you for clarifying. Not that I agree entirely, mind, just that your initial comment was clarified.

[oldmanjay]

I'm always fascinated when people decide to have an opinion on facts. That little spark gets fanned into the flames of religion so easily, and it's no exaggeration to say it is a primary driver in the shape of our civilization.

[sidlls]

I'm almost never fascinated when folks mistake opinion for fact. It's the primary driver in many language wars, as I see it. Some come to recognize that no language is perfect, especially their favored one. Others don't.