[overfeed]

I like rust as a language, but boy, the violent, zero-sum proselytising gets on my nerves. It's not enough for Rust to win, but C must be beaten to a pulp and its head mounted on a pike.

New projects wearing an another project's skin have always bothered me - regardless of language. Ubuntu did a similar thing way back with libav masquerading as ffmpeg.

[pdimitar]

How dramatic. I'll ask you as well: any proof for those colorful pictures you're drawing? Or are the people advocating for Rust a convenient target to vent other, very likely completely unrelated, frustrations?

I'm very happy to work with multiple programming languages without getting religious about any of them. They all have drawbacks, Rust included of course.

However, just my mere skepticism about the existence of the "violent proselytizing for Rust" of course immediately had me put in some imaginary group of fanatics. Which is of course normal. People love their binary camps and nuance and discission about merits be damned.

[bayindirh]

As another data point, I have gone through enough flame wars, incl. the usual ones, and Rust.

There's certainly a fanatic group of Rust developers who really want to eradicate C and C++ from the people's knowledge and all codebases in this universe, so far so openly hating the developers and designers of the said languages.

Same was (or still is) true for some LLVM/clang people w.r.t. GCC.

This is why I use neither.

I'm always happy to discuss PLT and merits of programming languages with neutral parties, even in lively fashion, but when open-mindedness gets thrown out of the window, I do leave the room.

These kinds of healthy discussions will benefit both parties. Hubris, ego, closed-mindedness and fanaticism won't.

Related: What Killed Smalltalk Could Kill Ruby, Too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX3iRjKj7C0

[pdimitar]

Well, I don't see them in HN is what I am saying. Obviously not scanning 24/7 but every time I enter an HN thread where Rust is even loosely mentioned, I brace for the inevitable bullies imagining they are victims. And this thread is exactly the same, sadly.

I am genuinely curious where this fanatic group is. Where are you witnessing them?

[bayindirh]

> I brace for the inevitable bullies imagining they are victims.

As a person who is bullied physically, verbally and emotionally for years, I'd not throw words bully/victim like wrapping paper like that. Moreover, I'd never bully anyone. I'm not that.

> I am genuinely curious where this fanatic group is. Where are you witnessing them?

Discord servers, mailing lists, issue threads, discussions, here and there. They are very vocal and abrasive minority, but it's enough to make me stay away from them. A special-ops group of these people claim that Rust needs no official specification and they can just ad-hoc develop the language and spec as the compiler evolves, as a side-product of compiler itself (i.e. spec is the compiler).

Last time I encountered them as functional programming fanatics in mid 2000s to 2010s. They successfully made me dislike the community so much that I didn't touch any functional programming language to this day.

Make no mistake: My favorite languages have the same fanatics, and I stay away from them, too. For example, C++ fanatics are an interesting bunch. They don't bully other languages, but new C++ developers who doesn't code like them or the way they like.

Maybe one day I'll start writing Rust, after gccrs stabilizes (they're going well) or really start writing lisp, but I'm sure that I'll never ask a question to a mere mortal about programming in either language.

[pdimitar]

> As a person who is bullied physically, verbally and emotionally for years, I'd not throw words bully/victim like wrapping paper like that. Moreover, I'd never bully anyone. I'm not that.

I was bullied as well. Knowing karate and aikido helped but not much, those people just hated me for reasons I never quite understood and kept coming in groups even. Some days I wondered whether I'll go back home from school alive. However, me entering middle age has me almost not caring anymore about the reasons they were like that, so I got that going for me which is nice.

I am not "throwing" words. I believe I know what I am talking about because I witnessed a few bullies wisening up to losing prestige and status for being rightfully called out and learning to pretend they are the victims... and it worked in part. It was sickening then, it's sickening now, wherever I spot it. HN is one of those places.

And btw I was not talking about you. You seem more reasonable than f.ex. this poster under my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48123734

> Discord servers, mailing lists, issue threads, discussions, here and there. They are very vocal and abrasive minority, but it's enough to make me stay away from them.

OK, I'll admit ignorance because I don't go to any of those places or at least it's very rare.

One thing jumps at me: you are avoiding those people which is 100% fair and I would as well. But why avoid Rust itself? Why look down on any rewrite-in-Rust initiatives? Why do you allow yourself be emotionally manipulated? Would you stop believing in your favorite alternative-energy or alternative-engine approaches if they had the 0.1% toxic zealots screaming for attention on events dedicated to those areas?

I can somewhat relate, mind you. One example: I hated how everyone was trying to make me read some book classics and basically made it a point to avoid them just based on that. I was fully aware that was an irrational reaction that was likely robbing me of enjoying good art. I take big pride in myself for finally overcoming this some 2-3 years ago and starting to go through those books. They were nothing special, mind you, and I still couldn't see why people deem most of them classics but at least now my opinion is my own and built with my own two eyes and brain.

> Make no mistake: My favorite languages have the same fanatics, and I stay away from them, too.

Well, that by itself seems to close the discussion. You are aware of this nuance.

> Maybe one day I'll start writing Rust, after gccrs stabilizes (they're going well) or really start writing lisp, but I'm sure that I'll never ask a question to a mere mortal about programming either language.

I refuse to feel shame about wanting to learn and absorb other people's expertise. If somebody is being an arse about it then it's them who are embarrassing themselves; not me. But I do agree it's a waste of time and I'll admit nowadays I start with an LLM session and only then branch out to people if I feel unsatisfied. But that's a function of how awfully busy I am and not that I am becoming more antisocial. (Which also explains I dissociated for 1-2h and preferred to read HN or a book.)

[bayindirh]

> But why avoid Rust itself? Why look down on any rewrite-in-Rust initiatives?

It's not avoiding, but choosing not to work with it, and it boils down to a couple of reasons. First, I don't work with a language which doesn't have a native GCC frontend. This is part due to supporting GCC & Free Software, and part don't liking rugpulls like license changes and whatnot. My personal weight is beyond negligible in changing outcomes of big currents, but at least I have my principles and stick to them. It's worth noting that I'm not "burning inside" to keep this stance. It's natural for me to do this, and I already like and write C++ and I'm somewhat experienced in that preventing race conditions and memory safety, so that keeps me covered. For smaller stuff I like Go these days. It's a goofball of a language which is very performant and excellent for what it's designed for.

I like to have a tool belt covering a wide gamut of scenarios, and what I use most covers all the needs I have. So Rust is interesting, I don't need it for now.

For the rust rewrites, while I'm not against them in principle, rewriting GPL software with MIT and other permissive licenses is against my values, so I don't support any of them. Writing GPL software with Rust is very possible, and I might do that in the future, but currently I have a couple of heavyweight C++ projects I'd rather work on (in the caliber of material simulations running on HPC systems).

> I refuse to feel shame about wanting to learn and absorb other people's expertise.

My reasons for not interacting with communities are very different. I'm not ashamed of failing, doing mistakes or whatnot. The reasons of I'm tired of interacting with rude people who gets their dopamine from putting people down, so I don't want to navigate all the thorns of the people to get a small bit of knowledge from them. Second, I'm relatively good with reading language references and documentation. I can ingest API documentation with ease and work from first principles.

If required, I can fight the good fight in any arena. I just don't see value of doing it for anything and everything.

In short, I'm not that hopeless to play that game. I'll rather die on hills which are worthy of the fight.

> I start with an LLM session

I don't use LLMs because I don't condone how they are trained, and again reading the reference is much better than a chat interface for me.

Hope that helps.