by FieryMechanic | 2025-12-12 23:48:31+00:00
> I don't _hate_ them or anything. They are super solid tools and I have derived a lot of value out of them in a previous life. But they leave a lot of room for overly clever humans to abuse them and make life hard for the next guy. Which is exactly how I was exposed to them, dozens of times.

I don't understand why many people on here say "humans", instead of people. It sounds like you are talking as if you are a grey alien on a space ship somewhere.

What you are complaining about is abuse of tools/language features. This can happen in any language and/or tools.

That doesn't mean the tool itself is bad.

> Help me understand the actual technical criticism buried in the "worm its way everywhere", please. And in the "it's good for CV/Resume padding" statement as well.

They are self explanatory. I don't like it when someone does this stupid game of not understanding common idioms.

> It's a strange thing to say and it smells like a personal vendetta which is weirdly common on HN about Rust and to this day I have no idea why even though I have asked many people directly.

It isn't. What typically happens is that a tool lets call it "Y" get used everywhere to the point where you cannot use "X" without "Y".

Ruby used to get used for CV padding. I used to work in a Windows/.NET shop and someone wrote a whole service using Ruby on Rails in a Suse Linux. That person left and got a job doing Rails shortly after.

> Rust has objective technical merits and many smart devs have documented those in their blogs -- journeys on rewrites or green-field projects, databases, network tools (like OP), and even others. Big companies do studies and prove less memory safety bugs over the course of months or years of tests.

Just because <large company> does something and says something is true doesn't mean it is or is suitable for everyone or it is actually true.

I have worked at many <large corps> as a contractor and found that the reality presented to the outside world is very different to what is actually happening in the building.

e.g.

I was working at a large org that rewrote significant portions of their code-base in new language instead of simply migrating their existing code-base to a new runtime.

I made plenty of money as a contractor, but it was a waste resources and the org lost money for 3 years as a result.

BTW they never fully transitioned over to the new code-base.

Company blogs and press releases will say it was a success. I know for a fact it wasn't.

> The Linux kernel devs (not unanimously) have agreed that Rust should no longer have experimental status there recently -- and people are starting to write Linux drivers in Rust and they work.

So I will need any additional toolchain to build Linux drivers. This is what is meant by "worming its way in". I have done a LFS build and it takes a long time to get everything built as it is.

> I am honestly not sure what would satisfy the people who seem to hate Rust so passionately. I guess it announcing full disband and a public apology that it ever existed? Yes this is a bit of a sarcastic question but really, I can't seem to find a place on the internet where people peacefully discuss this particular topic.

You are making assumptions that I hate Rust. I don't. I just don't care for it.

What I do hate is hype and this constant cycle of the IT industry deciding that everything has to be rewritten again in <new thing> because it is trendy. I have personally been through it many times now, both as an end user and as a developer making the transition to the <new thing>.