Rust Is Just a Tool
Source: Hacker News
Why I Like Rust
I like Rust.
It’s versatile enough that it can be used for application and systems programming. It has the best tooling of any language I’ve seen. It has a fairly pleasant type system. And I think most importantly it does a great job in bringing higher‑level language features into an environment without a garbage collector. Rust has arguably set the bar for “fast languages that are also decently expressive”.
But it’s just a programming language. Programming Rust does not mean I have to:
- like every popular crate
- buy into their marketing hype
- follow community “best practices”
- attack someone who prefers to solve a particular problem in C, or Zig
- refuse to admit it has design flaws
- refuse to admit the language is complex
- refuse to admit there are alternatives to RAII
- give the same smug lectures about “safety” we have all heard dozens of times before
I’m picking on Rust here because it’s no secret it has a long history of having some very… enthusiastic users. But my broader point is that tools are just tools. They’re not our identity, a mark of our wisdom, or a moral choice. Other people have different perspectives, tastes, and skills—and they may prefer different tools to us.
We would do well to accept this.