[IshKebab]

> The rust compiler is very slow.

It was very slow. It's gotten a lot faster over time (over 2x faster). It's still not exactly fast, but it's definitely faster than C++. Although C++'s slow compile times are often complained about they were never really enough to stop most people using it, including for games.

> a garbage collector eliminates a large amount of defects (including the ones stated in the article) without any added friction

I'd be careful about that "without any added friction". Rust's lifetime/borrowing system tends to lead to less buggy code because it encourages structuring code in a less spaghetti way. GC does eliminate memory errors but you also lose that non-spaghetti code structure.

[pjmlp]

Because contrary to Rust, C and C++ have a culture of binary libraries.

You are seldom compiling the world from scratch.

Especially in the platforms dear to game devs.

[IshKebab]

> You are seldom compiling the world from scratch.

True in Rust too though - you're normally doing incremental compiles. And even though you're compiling the world, it's still on par with C++. For example I just tried compiling a hello world Bevy project, which has 462 crate dependencies - pretty big. It took 2m20. Totally reasonable to build an entire game engine and all it's dependencies.

I wish they had reported the compile time of Bun before/after the Rust port - that would have been very interesting.

[pjmlp]

Yeah but compiling full Unreal from scratch already requires going down the path of forking it for own purposes.

Same applies to most commercial libraries, where code is usually provided for debugging purposes, not for building everything from scratch.

Also incremental linking on Rust, or hot code reloading is still not something that works out of the box.

How beefy is that machine to achieve 2m20? I started using C++ on MS-DOS, on a 20 MHz 386SX PC with 2MB RAM and 20 MB HDD.

Especially relevant in current times.

[IshKebab]

> How beefy is that machine to achieve 2m20?

Ryzen 9 3950X (16 core). I think it was top of the line 5 or 6 years ago but it only cost me about £300 second hand for the whole PC (with 128 GB RAM - before the RAMpocalypse!) Definitely not a crazy machine.

> I started using C++ on MS-DOS, on a 20 MHz 386SX PC with 2MB RAM and 20 MB HDD

Yeah, I mean early C++ was quite a lot simpler than modern C++23! Of course it's going to compile way faster. You're not compiling UE 5 on that machine! Compilers didn't have so many slow optimisations back then either.

[pjmlp]

Yes, but no one needs to use C++23 to the full extent to stress test the compiler in -O3, or go crazy with compile time execution.

While I could comfortably still develop C++ in a Asus 1215B netbook with 8 GB and SSD, thanks to all the native libraries I could install, and make use via pkgconfig, the same could not be said to play around with Rust on the same netbook.

This matters, because not everyone can afford top of the line desktops, especially in 2nd and 3rd level countries, which then plays a role in language adoption.

Some even make do with what they can run on tablets.

[IshKebab]

I don't think I really agree with that. You can make do with less powerful machines in Rust too. Until this year I was using a 12 year old quad core machine that was only a bit faster than a RPi 5.

I think the biggest issue is actually disk space. C++ isn't exactly efficient with disk space but Rust is on another level. You're going to run out of disk space on that netbook it you have any more than like 2 Rust projects built.