[tpoacher]

If there's a "hipster" notion here it's not that of choosing C as rebellion against Rust, but that choosing C constitutes a rebellion against Rust and only Rust, as if it's the only systems programming language worth it's salt.

E.g., explain to me like I'm 10 why you think Rust is better than, say, D.

[shrimp_emoji]

It seems to me like D is like if you took the most complicated language in the world, C++, and did even more stuff to it, like adding in an optional garbage collector. One reason it's so complicated is that "low level" programming plus OOP seem to be a terrible mix. D is trying to improve a messy room by re-organizing some things and introducing a Roomba.

Rust blazes a whole new path, with the slightly different objective of safety. It's simple and lean, almost like C. It bakes in lessons learned over the years like inheritance being overly complicated, OOP generally being overly complicated, and how dangerous systems programming can be by having modules instead of classes, composition instead of inheritance, and memory safety as a default. It also broke the false dichotomy of "fast but dangerously leaky" or "slow but safely garbage collected" by introducing borrow checking and move semantics, allowing speed and safety with no garbage collection.

D feels like a continuation down an evolutionary dead end, like teleputer cartridges in Infinite Jest.

Rust feels like an innovative fresh start, like transferring digital DRM-free files.

(If you think that makes D sound charming, I agree. But realistically I would stick with Rust. :p)

[tpoacher]

I won't lie, I lol'ed at the Roomba bit :D