[akagusu]

Because there is a coordinated effort on HN to suppress any dissent view on certain topics.

Rust is one of these topics. If you want to be flagged and down voted, just write a critic about Rust.

Even tell about this is a motive to be down voted.

[baranul]

Sadly, this appears to be true. For whatever strange reasons, Rust (and Zig) are glazed and hyped beyond any sense and way out of proportion to their language rankings (see TIOBE)[1]. Rust is not even in the TIOBE top 10. Zig is barely in their top 50.

These two languages look like they have a weird kind of "protected and special status" on HN. Other programming language don't get anything like the push and special treatment that these do.

[1]: https://archive.md/sJRyf (TIOBE Index Novemeber 2025)

[aw1621107]

> If you want to be flagged and down voted, just write a critic about Rust.

Nonsense. It's not all that hard to find well-received stuff on HN critical of Rust (e.g., from a quick search there's [0, 1, 2] and plenty more, especially around async and/or deps). The key is to write substantive/thoughtful/constructive criticism. In fact, that applies in general - substantive/thoughtful/constructive articles/comments are much more likely to be well-received no matter their topic.

This article does touch on some of Rust's weaknesses/pain points, but does an absolutely atrocious job of doing so. Right off the bat you have this:

    Example comparison (small benchmark):

    # C++ (g++)
    $ time g++ main.cpp -o main
    real    0m0.4s

    # Rust (cargo build --release)
    $ time cargo build --release
    real    0m9.7s

Yes, Rust's compile times can be long, but if you wanted to demonstrate that then this is pretty much the worst possible way to do so as not only is it not comparing apples to apples (it's comparing a debug build to a release build) but we don't even know what is being compiled!

And it's pretty much downhill from there. Like this:

> Suddenly, the compiler starts screaming:

    error[E0515]: cannot return value referencing local variable

Well yes, that's an error. It's also wrong in C++. In fact, C++26 makes (some forms?) a hard error as well, so C++ is moving to match Rust in this respect.

The code organization example is yet again not an apples-to-apples comparison. It's also straight up wrong to boot.

The migration decision tree is inconsistent as well. If "memory safety is your #1 priority", then C++ with sanitizers is definitely not a viable option.

So on and so forth. If you want to write Rust criticism and be received well, this is definitely not the way to do so.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40172033

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36239534

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41791773

[wakawaka28]

Much more superficial stuff flies on this site and even gets hundreds of upvotes. You haven't explained why this is flagged.

[aw1621107]

> Much more superficial stuff flies on this site and even gets hundreds of upvotes.

Sure, but the fact that one thing gets one kind of reception but another thing gets another tells you little since HN is not a monolith. Different people read different things, have different thresholds for flagging stuff, so on and so forth.

> You haven't explained why this is flagged.

My comment was not an attempt to explain why the post was flagged in the first place?

It's not like I can give a definitive reason for its flagging either, since a) I don't know the precise manner in which HN's software determines whether something is flagged or not, b) I can't read the minds of everyone who flagged the article, let alone try to determine whether their reason for flagging was "valid" (assuming I'm even qualified to make that determination), and c) I have no idea if the moderators manually flagged this article. I can make guesses, sure, but it's not like my guesses would be worth any more than yours.

If you see something is flagged and think it should not be, the best way to try to resolve the issue is to either vouch for it, or if that doesn't work, email the moderators.

[wakawaka28]

I don't think I have enough points to vouch for anything. The rules about how many points are required to do things seem to promote a hive mind phenomenon.

If you're not trying to explain why this thing is flagged, or at least why it isn't flagged, idk why you are in this thread. But it's all good.

[aw1621107]

> I don't think I have enough points to vouch for anything.

Based on this [0] (and a few other random comments search engines pulled up) the points threshold for vouching is supposedly 31. It does appear that I misunderstood the vouching functionality, though, since apparently it's supposed to counteract [dead] posts, not [flagged]. My mistake!

> The rules about how many points are required to do things seem to promote a hive mind phenomenon.

As with many things, it's a tradeoff. Having a points threshold also makes it harder to abuse new accounts to manipulate flags/votes/etc., so there's no free lunch here.

> If you're not trying to explain why this thing is flagged, or at least why it isn't flagged, idk why you are in this thread.

My intent was very specifically to push back against the claim that Rust criticism is a surefire way to get downvoted/flagged. The tl;dr is that good criticism of Rust is well-received, and this article is not a good critique and so it's not all that surprising that it was not well-received.

[0]: https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented/blob/m...

[wakawaka28]

I'm inclined to agree with him. I've had comments mass downvoted here and on Reddit over Rust criticism. It's not even symmetrical either, because the threshold to be able to downvote is 500 points. I'll never get to that level (or stay there) unless I stick to very milquetoast takes on things. I shouldn't care but it's unfair and annoying. At one point I even lost the theme feature because I made a few unpopular comments in a row and got like 50 downvotes in a short time. The way the votes are tabulated is also confusing. It is not one to one. It's like, the downvoted posts contribute more than the sum total of the downvotes, based on the replies.

[timeon]

Ok let's discuss the article. Can you give example, from the article, you like?

[bigyabai]

Your account is like 90% Rust-bashing. Have you considered getting a job?