[tialaramex]

> Most (if not all) of your posts here on HN boil down to "C/C++ bad, Rust good".

I haven't measured but it's easy to say categorically that it's not "all" unless somehow my posts about network protocols, aeroplanes, security and psychology among others fall into this vague category.

And yes, like Ignaz Semmelweis I can see an obvious improvement to how my profession does what it does and it's infuriating that the response from many other practitioners is "No, I don't like change, therefore you're crazy for explaining why I should change"

Ignaz Semmelweis died in an asylum. But on the other hand while Ignaz was correct and his proposals would have worked he couldn't explain why because germ theory was only confirmed after he died. Rust isn't in that situation, we know already exactly what the problems are with C++. So that means I can tell you not just that using C++ is a bad idea, but why it's a bad idea.

[googh]

Most HN users already use languages with GC which are more memory safe than Rust. People still use C++ either because they are maintaining existing code, or they work in domains where memory safety is not really necessary (games, HFT, ML). Apart from these, C++ is rarely used in the real world.

> practitioners is "No, I don't like change, therefore you're crazy for explaining why I should change"

Who exactly are you referring to here? Your co-workers? LLVM maintainers? or the Linux kernel developers? Please be more precise.

[hyperbrainer]

What is "more memory-safe than rust" supposed to mean? Rust is completely memory-safe.

[tialaramex]

Only safe Rust can guarantee this, and only as a consequence of any unsafe Rust being correct.

Most of the popular Garbage Collected languages of course also have a way to escape, in some cases via an "unsafe" keyword or magic unsafe package to a language where the same safety rules do not exist, in this sense the difference in Rust is that it's the same language.

I'd actually say the more memory safe option would be a language like WUFFS where it pays a high price (generality) to deliver categorically better safety and performance. Most software could not be written in WUFFS but also most of the software which could be written in WUFFS isn't.