I don't know much about Rust besides that the Wikipedia entry says, however just because some other people use it for comparisons with some other languages doesn't mean you can bash Rush just because it isn't as good as some other language at some arbitrary feature; you're just doing the exact same thing as them in that case. Besides, what other languages are they comparing to anyway?

It's one thing to compare Rust to a language which maybe it was intended to compete against, such as C++. It's another thing to compare it to some entirely different language, such as Lisp or Haskell or COBOL or even Perl; Rust certainly wasn't intended to directly compete against any of these.

When pretty much every other language out there, including C and C++, can do string handling better than Rust can, the problem isn't with the fact that competition is happening. The problem is solely that Rust's string handling is total shit.

You're kidding, right? I've never used Rust, so I can't testify to its string handling, but I'm very familiar with C and C++ and using strings in both, and they both completely suck. C is absolutely horrible, and C++ is terrible too if you use the standard library. You only get good string-handling in C++ by switching to a library like Qt.

As for what it's competing against, that's just ridiculous. No language is competing against every language out there; every language has its strengths and weaknesses. C is really good at low-level programming that's one step above assembly, but it sucks at a lot of things (including string handling). Perl is excellent at string parsing, but sucks at performance and readability. R is really good at math, but completely unusable for writing an OS. I'm sure Rust fits in there too somehow. The point is, you can't just compare Rust, or any language, against any other arbitrary language and then bash it because it fails. Is C unusable because it sucks at text parsing? If text parsing is what you need, then yes, but if you're writing an OS kernel, then no.

I don't get your meaning here. "Venial" means "pardonable".

Not true, C# has been off of Windows for a long time by way of Mono.

The conventional wisdom here has been that Mono is always a few steps behind MS's implementation of C#, so it's not fully compatible.

I don't know if that still holds true, but it used to be the general understanding.

I never thought that C++'s standard library was very good, but it's a pleasure to work with compared to Rust's.

Rust's string handling is a particularly bad disaster, and this permeates throughout the entire standard library.

Rust's standard library is pretty pathetic compared to C#'s, or Python's

I just don't see why Rust is getting as much hype as it currently is getting.

I'm not a Rust expert, but I think you're trying to use a hammer to turn a screw here. As I understand it, Rust was never meant to compete with C# or Python; it's supposed to be a system-level language, which means it competes with C and C++. Both of those have pretty lame standard libraries and absolutely horrible string handling. If you want to do real string handling in C++, for instance, you'd be an idiot to use the standard library, and really should use a different library. My personal preference is Qt; string handling in Qt is wonderful and easy, and extremely readable unlike some other C++ libraries I've seen.

From what I read on Rust's wikipedia entry, it appears to be intended to serve much like C or C++, but with memory safety. Null pointers aren't allowed.

I wonder how your performance would compare if you wrote that code (the production code I mean) in C++ rather than C. C is missing all those features, whereas in C++ you can get most of them using the appropriate library. Lots of C++ libraries have hashes (I like Qt's implementation personally), and it also has autovivification.

One big factor, here, however, is how similar the language is to ones you already know.

For instance, if you already are well-versed in C and C++, looking at some D or Rust code probably isn't going to be hard for you. However, looking at something in Haskell or Lisp is. A lot of languages these days are very C-like and either imperative or object-oriented (in an imperative way), so to me it's really rather trivial to learn them; it's just a matter of learning what's different. But if you start looking at languages which are really different from ones you know, then it becomes much more challenging. Looking at one with syntax unlike C will be one factor (like with Python), but looking at something entirely different like a functional language will be even harder.

Sounds a lot like Edison: a great intuitive grasp of mechanical things, but poor math ability so unable to analyze things that way.

The theory also gives you the tools necessary to refine your designs so that you can build something better without having to resort to so much trial-and-error.

It was cool that Faraday was able to build some primitive electric engines for demonstration purposes in his day, but with Maxwell's theories, Tesla was able to build far better electric engines which had significant real-world applications (Tesla's generators were used for power plants).

The invention of teleporters isn't going to suddenly make work obsolete.

Someone still has to build and maintain the teleporters, for instance.

For instance why bother having Starfleet at all if you can teleport instantly by belt-buckle to the Klingon homeworld?

Exactly, which is why JJ Abram's new movies don't make any sense at all.

Yep, the entire reason they even invented the transporter is because they didn't have enough money to build shuttlecraft and sets for them at the beginning. The shuttlecraft weren't seen until later episodes. The transporter was cheap and easy, from a filming standpoint.

Why should they? As long as they had a good run, what does it matter? Nothing lasts forever, certainly not any corporations. How many major corporations can you list which haven't either collapsed, been bought out, or significantly contracted in over 50 years? I can't think of any. Even IBM had a major contraction back in the 90s. Ford certainly contracted a lot, but these days they're doing great.

As for "durable goods", cars don't last that long. Sure, a few weirdos keep the 25+-year-old models in pristine shape, and other cheapos keep old cars running (barely) long past their prime, but most cars are not kept more than 2 decades or so. And this span of time is quite a bit greater than it used to be: 30-50 years ago, a car was considered junk when it had 50,000 miles on it. It's only been the last 10-20 years where it became normal for cars to go well over 100k miles.

You've got to wonder if Obama released a statement that read "I like puppies. They're cute.", how quickly would Republicans line up to declare that puppies are evil spawns of Satan and real Americans own cats, not dogs.

Personally, I think dogs are a pain in the ass and it annoys me how dogs are generally favored as pets, so I really wish Obama would do exactly this.

Then again, this probably isn't a good idea: then all the Democrat voters will suddenly be dog lovers (because they'll support anything the Democratic party tells them to, even if it only benefits their rich constituents like in the media companies), and all the Republican voters will suddenly be cat lovers, and I don't really want to hang out with Republicans. Democrats annoy me sometimes, but I can stand them far better than I can Republicans. At least the Democratic voters aren't always talking about how the Rapture is about to happen.

You still don't get it, do you? Nothing is permanent. It doesn't matter if Detroit fell; for a long time, it was highly successful. If you were a highly compensated auto executive there in the 50s, who cares if it's going downhill 20 years later? By then, you'll be retired.

By your logic, everyone in Rome at 100BC should have moved out because the city was going to fall ~500 years later.