Exactly this. It's all about trade-offs. You need to pick the right tool for the job. Sometimes the right tool is dangerous. Knives are dangerous tools, but you need them if you want to cook a meal.
I love one comparison to hole hawg[0] (used for unix vs windows&mac), which is usable here. Memory safe languages are like a fancy electric drill from target. They get the job done, but if you want some more serious drilling they die on you instead of doing something dangerous. C is like one of those drills which are comprised of engine and a handle (cheap, changeable piece of steel pipe). They are designed to do one thing: they rotate a drill. When drill blocks, they rotate you. But when you take appropriate precautions, boy do it drills...
This is from my favourite book: In the beginning was the command line.
So what are you able to do with C that you can’t do in Rust? Somethings are more difficult to pull off, but everything possible in C is possible in Rust. Worst comes to worst you can always drop into unsafe Rust
This “sometimes you need a knife" argument just doesn’t make sense. You can have the power and the safety. Stop cutting off your fingers.
yetihehe|1 year ago
This is from my favourite book: In the beginning was the command line.
[0] https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs81n/command.txt , search "HOLE HAWG".
superb_dev|1 year ago
This “sometimes you need a knife" argument just doesn’t make sense. You can have the power and the safety. Stop cutting off your fingers.