[belval]

The first two points I don't really have anything to add on.

> Is your position here that the sole advantage of Rust over C++ is that since projects are newer, they're better to work on? And if so, is that advantage illegitimate?

No, to rephrase, I think that maintenance work on average feels less productive and more grueling because you can spend 3 days debugging for a single line change. With a new project (or any new feature) you get to write your own thing which feels more productive.

I'm not saying people are less productive with Rust than C++. I am pointing out that there is a natural bias in the type of work that those two languages are being used for at Google and that this bias will impact self-assessed productivity.

> Does none of that work over four years count as "maintenance"?

Respectfully I think you are building a strawman because you (likely) work with Rust and enjoy it. Google is built on a staggering amount of 10-20 years old C++ codebases that have seen several runs of refactoring at this point and stand on the critical path of several of their most important products. Working on those is inherently slower and more meticulous than writing new Android features (even if 4 years old) in Rust.

[steveklabnik]

Thanks.