[moltonel3x]

People often point this out, silently implying that Rust is not really supported/usable on the lower tiers and that therefore those platform should stick to C. But that's ignoring that the situation is the same with gcc/clang: niche platforms get much less testing, and very niche ones might have bitrotted without anyone noticing. Gcc doesn't publish or adheres to a tiered platform list, but if it was using Rustc's definition it would be at most tier 2 (because tier 1 distributes official binaries, and prevents any tier1-breaking changes from being merged).

[pjmlp]

Also, GCC also has support for Go, D, Ada, Modula-2, it isn't as if the GCC side isn't without options for safe systems programming.

And in any case, C++ is always a better option than C regarding safety, when nothing else is available.

[moltonel3x]

D, Ada, and Modula don't have enough traction.

Go's runtime can be a showstopper, especially for multi-language projects.

C++ may be better than C, but many people feel that Rust is even better.

Rust is already available in almost all scenarios, there's no need to wait for it.

[pjmlp]

So now we moved from not having alternatives, to alternatives exist but...

[yjftsjthsd-h]

If I'm using a device on one of the lower tiers, it's fair to assume that the C compiler for it has been exercised quite a lot, much more than the shiny new rust compiler that I'm introducing that I have no reason to think anybody else has ever used on this platform.

[callalex]

Curl could be assumed to be one of the most well-exercised code bases in the world, and yet there are still bugs.

[moltonel3x]

Why would you think that nobody has ever used Rust there ? Somebody has obviously put in the work to support that platform, rustc doesn't just blindly inherits the list of target triples from llvm.

While it's safe to assume that C gets a decent amount of use on every platform, you can't expect all platforms to be as well-supported as the major ones. Undoubtedly, some of those platforms would be listed as low-tier if the C compilers cared to maintain a platform tier list. But a platform being low-tier doesn't mean you shouldn't use that compiler there.

As for trusting Rust or C on niche platforms, C is so full of UB, platform-specific choices, and vendor extensions, that it's hard to ever fully know how well this or that project will work. Rust is much less surprising, if it works at all I expect it to fully work. I'd definitely pick Rust on niche platforms if I have the choice.

[ammar2]

There actually isn't that much work to adding basic support for a new platform target for Rust. You're moreso banking on LLVM's ability to target it, which, given clang gives you that C compiler maturity you're after.

[pjmlp]

Likewise for C++, with standard library types having support for bounds checking, no need to wait for Rust.

While not as safe as Rust, it is definitly much safer than plain C.