| > I think your approach is too coloured by emotion, and is therefore unconstructive. Your little “I'm a rational agent, you are too emotional” is pretty cute. But it would work better if your whole attitude in this thread didn't contradicted it, don't you think? “Rust is among the five most complex language” is not a rational argument, it's a personal feeling. Why you feel the need to spread your feelings over the internet while pretending you're not an “emotional” person is quite intriguing. If you want to look more like a rational person (no human really is), try to keep as much personal and unsubstantiated judgement out of your writings. “Rust marketing makes safety claims that we should not take at face values” is alright, “Rust is one of the five most complex language ever” doesn't pass this test. > is the computational complexity of deciding whether a string is in the language (so, including type-checking) But for both Rust, C, Zig, and many others, it's undecidable, so by this definition of complexity, these language are definitely too complex (and equally so).[1]
In fact, your desperate attempt to save your initial argument about complexity, by narrowing it to a tiny technical corner makes me cringe a bit. > I would never, say, make a definitive claim like, "Zig yields more correct programs than Rust", or "Rust yields more correct programs than Zig," without clear empirical support (and my guess based on prior results would be that they're about the same). The technicality of what constitute a “definitive claim” in a human to human conversation is an interesting question, but in practice truisms like “we can't conclude whether Rust is safer than C” or “we can't conclude that Rust doesn't bring more bugs than Zig does” aren't neutral: what such claim attempts to do is insinuate the opposite. And when combined with gratuitous judgements like “Rust is one of the 5 most complex language ever”, it looks a lot like an attempt to deter people from using this language you don't like. (And now I have a clue on what the root cause of your bad feelings can be). [1] And as I said earlier, in the case of Zig and unsafe Rust and it's not just about type-checking: because of UB, even after compilation whether the compiled binary is the binary of a valid program or not is also undecidable. |
My comments on this tried to be as careful and as precise as possible, and touched on this very issue.
> In fact, your desperate attempt to save your initial argument about complexity, by narrowing it to a tiny technical corner makes me cringe a bit.
Your emotional response here is so powerful that I think we're conversing on entirely different levels. I am sorry if my mild and careful statements have touched on something that you clearly see as essential to your identity.
> aren't neutral: what such claim attempts to do is insinuate the opposite
No. It is the most precise and careful statement that I can say, having followed the research for years and being a practitioner and advocate of formal formal methods. Anything I say, the more careful I try to be, it just seems to send you into further rage (and abuse). I think you're in a middle of a tantrum that's clouded your judgment, or perhaps, being a zealot, you cannot imagine any other attitude. Anyway, this conversation is making me very uncomfortable, as I sense you're in a very agitated emotional state, and I want no part of that.