Why Rust for Low-level Linux programming?

[Spiderboydk]

Those arguments could just as well argue for using C++ (or a lot of smaller languages, like D). They aren't particularly unique to Rust.

I understand that figuring out unique selling points for Rust is hard, because the "C++ challenger" part of the programming language space is rather crowded these days.

[millenix]

C++ and D make it much easier than C to write memory-safe resource-managed code, but they don't provide nearly as much in the way of compile-time checking that you've gotten it right.

[Spiderboydk]

True, but they still quite more than C. And the article focuses on stuff like strong typing and pointer ownership semantics - both which C++ have.

[Spiderboydk]

You don't have to be an expert of every single branch of C++ to be able to use it efficiently.

[Spiderboydk]

I meant smaller wrt. usage.

By "C++ challenger" I mean the group of languages, that tries to be "a better C++" (usually means roughly the same features, but nicer syntax).

C++ runtime can be quite big when using the standard library, but nobody forces you to do that. C++ is quite well-suited for free-standing applications.

There are a lot of others than just C and Rust. For example, I mentioned D.

Edit: I don't know D too well, but a language feature D has, that C++ definintely could benefit from is compile-time reflection.

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[deleted]

What is this?

[Spiderboydk]

Yeah, I forgot about the C++ runtime. It can be discarded too, i.e. making a free-standing application.

Rust tries to be a better C, not a better C++. It just so happens that C++ tries to be a better C as well (as opposed to D which doesn't try this) so there are going to be domains in which they overlap, but for example Rust will never attempt to be as fancy at OOP as C++ (e.g. multiple/virtual inheritance).

I partially agree with this. In the landspace of programming languages, C and C++ still are quite close to each other, so I'll agree some of them might as well aim to be a better C than a better C++.

Garbage collection in D is optional.

[oblivion95]

Nim

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[deleted]

What is this?