| Thanks. So basically Rust is combining object ownership and thread safety while C++ keeps thread safety separate, which would seem to provide more flexibility, but also lets you shoot yourself in the foot. Just thinking out loud, I wonder if C++ could better address this by also having a class of thread-aware smart pointers? -- but the problem is that C++ always has the old/new (C, C++) way of doing things - pthreads vs std::thread, std::mutex, etc, so even if the language provides easier ways of writing bug free code, there is no way to force developers to use those facilities. In C++ there is also the issue of how to make statically allocated data structures thread safe in an enforceable way. Another kind of smart reference object, perhaps? Disallow global objects not accessed by such references? C++ (which I have used since long before C++11) really wants to be two conflicting things - encompassing C's low level role as the ultimate systems programming language with no guardrails, while also wanting to compete as a much higher-level safer language for application developers. Perhaps the two safe+unsafe roles can be better combined into one language if one were to start from scratch. I'm not sure that Rust gets it right either - erring in the other direction by not being flexible enough. |
I ask because I can think of a few ways it’s less flexible than C, but I also think that effect is massively overstated by people who aren’t familiar with the language. There are OS kernels written in Rust, for example.