[cyber_kinetist]

It’s all fun and games until you find the need to unsafe Rust, which opens up a bunch of eldritch monstrosities that are sometimes even harder to tame than C++.

The happiness people get from Rust was achieved by the incredibly hard work of library developers who had to deal with all sorts of complex semantics under the hood to make safe Rust safe. The knowledge gap between library user and library writer is even worse than C++, where most people do not feel comfortable enough to actually write low-level libraries (custom data structures, bindings from C, optimized routines) in Rust.

(At least PL people are inventing things like stacked borrows to make writing unsafe Rust easier… but it’s still not easy.)

[unrealhoang]

on the other hand, that makes Rust's learning curve way way more gradual than C++. An intermediate programmer with 3 months of Rust experience can reliably and confidently cobble up the libraries together to contribute to the project. Whereas such programmer will be a heavy burden (for other seasoned devs to guide/review/feedback) in a C++ project.

Also, building low-level libraries that work correctly, efficiently, relatively-safely in C++ is NOT a simple feat, and requires years of experience (on API design). With unsafe Rust you can just fuzz/brute force out the unsoundness with the safe API.

[spoiler]

> It’s all fun and games until you find the need to unsafe Rust, which opens up a bunch of eldritch monstrosities that are sometimes even harder to tame than C++

Lol what? Unsafe is literally the only "mode" in C++. I'm not trying to shill Rust, but this is not true, and I don't know where you've read that opinion. Unsafe Rust is just Rust with the ability to use "C++ style" pointers.

> The happiness people get from Rust was achieved by the incredibly hard work of library developers

I'll give you that writing Rust libraries is harder, but that's true for any language. Even C++. Do Rust developers go the extra mile to make libraries ergonomic and have nice APIs? Yes! But that's not really a "problem" with Rust, it's something Rust enables, and now the community expects. C++ libraries in my experience tend to be a very bare minimum, and to use some of them it requires hundreds of lines of set up code. In cases where Rust libs require that much set up code, the authors go the extra mile to create macros or additional succinct APIs. So, yeah, their job is harder because they are held to a higher standard than C++ libraries, if anything.

Also, most of the effort with authoring Rust libraries is writing documentation, which is practically a requirement, whereas with most C++ libs (even some sections of boost!) you practically weep tears of joy when you see five lines written above a one class in a sea of classes.

> who had to deal with all sorts of complex semantics under the hood to make safe Rust safe. The knowledge gap between library user and library writer is even worse than C++, where most people do not feel comfortable enough to actually write low-level libraries (custom data structures, bindings from C, optimized routines) in Rust.

Sorry to be so blunt and call you out, but this is just so devoid of any sensible thought.

Most people don't feel comfortable writing low level libraries. Period. Regardless of language. For every library author, there's dozens of not hundreds of non-libray developers. Hell, most developers don't even contribute anything to open source in general, but just consume it.

So pretending C++ is this magical fairytale land where everyone produces libraries with the flick of a wrist is just bullshit.

[pjmlp]

It is true, it certainly is.

Which is why, those of use that want some Rust like confort, when C++ is part of the diet, turn on bounds checking (#define _ITERATOR_DEBUG_LEVEL 1 on VC++), and make use of static analysis during the whole development (/analyze on VC++).

It is bullet proof? No, but it does help surving a couple of shots.