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by gpderetta 3453 days ago
3. The set of compilers is > 1, and there exist at least a popular compiler that works on multiple platform.

Rust is in 1 of course. C++ is both in 2 and 3. In particular for C++, the compiler in 3 works on a strict superset of all the platforms supported by rust.

As you are free to support only this C++ compiler and ignore every other C++ compiler (you must not care about multiple implementations otherwise you wouldn't think that 1 is a good solution), it seems to me that 3 is strictly better than 1.

edit: I do concede that the existence of a popular but non-interoperable compiler[1] does fragment the community and it has been an issue in C++. Things are getting better though, and if rust becomes popular enough it might become an issue there as well.

[1] We all know which compiler I'm talking about.