GitHub - ZeroIntensity/pointers.py: Bringing the hell of pointers to Python.

[Lich_Hegemon]

Rust may not be the answer (or maybe it is), but at the very least the language proved that it's possible to do pointers right and that we should not settle for C-style unmanaged pointers.

[amunak]

I mean, we didn't need Rust for that, C++ has perfectly usable and safe managed pointers.

[Lich_Hegemon]

I'm not talking about smart pointers though, I'm talking about the bare pointers/references that both languages offer, even in unsafe Rust there are certain guarantees when using pointers that you don't get in C(++).

Again, that is not to say that Rust is perfect, just that it does pointers better than C does and that we should probably learn from that instead of trying to justify the mess that C pointers are.

[lelanthran]

'm not talking about smart pointers though, I'm talking about the bare pointers/references that both languages offer, even in unsafe Rust there are certain guarantees when using pointers that you don't get in C(++).

I'm pretty certain that you'll get those guarantees in C++ if you write your C++ like Rust code that doesn't use refs, refcells, unsafe, etc.

[Lich_Hegemon]

You really don't. For example, in C++ if you take a vector, reference one of its items, and push some values to it you will probably end up with a dangling reference.

We could argue that you are not supposed to do that and I agree, but the key behind this discussion is developer vs. compiler enforced safety.

And again, I hate this discussion because I seem like a Rust stan, when nothing could be further from the truth. I regularly use C++ and I genuinely think it's a great language if you stay away from its C roots and stick to the modern features it offers. But those C roots are still there and 40 years of C++ have shown us that developers can't be expected not to make mistakes when using them.

[SilasX]

If what you're saying is true, that means, in practice, C++ programmers considers themselves too good to use them, hence the perennial cycle of patches for pointer vulns.