[vvanders]

That assumes that people know what they're doing in C/C++, I've seen just as many bloated codebases in C++ if not more because the defaults for most compilers are not great and it's very easy for things to get out of hand with templates, excessive use of dynamic libraries(which inhibit LTO) or using shared_ptr for everything.

My experience is that Rust guides you towards defaults that tend to not hit those things and for the cases where you really do need that fine grained control unsafe blocks with direct pointer access are available(and I've used them when needed).

[Tanjreeve]

Is there a name for a fallacy like "appeal to stupidity" or something where the argument against using a tool that's fit for the job boils down to "All developers are too dumb to use this/you need to read a manual/it's hard" etc etc?

[vvanders]

I think there is something to be said about having good defaults and tools that don't force you to be on every last detail 100% lest they get out of control.

It also depends on the team, some teams have a high density of seasoned experts who've made the mistakes and know what to avoid but I think the history on mem vulns show that it's very hard to keep that bar consistently across large codebases or disperse teams.

[SpaceNugget]

It's not that all developers are dumb/stupid. It's that even the smartest developers make mistakes and thus having a safety net that can catch damaging mistakes is helpful.

[milesrout]

I've read several posts here where people say things like "this is badly designed becausw it assumes people read the documentation".

???????

Yes you need to read the docs. That is programming 101. If you have vim set up properly then you can open the man page for the identifier under your cursor in a single keypress. There is ZERO excuse not to read the manual. There is no excuse not to check error messages. etc.

Yet we consistently see people that want everything babyproofed.

[kojolina]

Nah, rust also guides you to "death from a million paper cuts" aka RAII (aka everything is singularly allocated and free'd all over the place).

You need memory management to be painful like in C so that it forces people to go for better options like linear/static group allocations.

[saagarjha]

I assure you that people do not go for better options

[nextn]

Why is RAII bad?