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0 pointstroad2y ago0 comments

I'm somewhat puzzled - the obvious answer is that you don't have to use them. Rust by itself is no less feature complete than C. Anything you can write in C without dependencies, you can write in Rust without dependencies too.

Of course, dependency-reliance falls on a spectrum for any individual programmer. On the one hand you have script kiddies with 400 npm dependencies gathered from arcane Discord channels - on the other you have old bearded wizards who don't understand why you'd need printf() when you can just mov rax 1; syscall.

I find Rust is not strongly opinionated about this. You can just as easily eschew dependencies as use them. There's usually a good array of options available, or you could always FFI to a C lib directly if you need to.

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4 comments · 1 top-level

palata2y ago· 3 in thread

> I'm somewhat puzzled

Because you find it fine to say that "people dramatically overestimate the correctness of their [C/C++] code", but not fine to say that "people tend to depend on too many third-parties that they never question"?

iknowstuff2y ago

We have solid data on how much Rust improves safety, while “too many” dependencies seems rather arbitrary. They tend to be high quality and better vetted/tested than bespoke code or copy-pasted hpp headers

palata2y ago

> They tend to be high quality and better vetted/tested

I thought anyone could publish rust packages, just like for PyPi? Are the packages audited before they are published in Rust?

> “too many” dependencies seems rather arbitrary

I would say that you have "too many" dependencies when you don't have control over them, e.g. because you can't afford auditing them or maintaining them. I have seen multiple Rust projects that I would rather rewrite myself than audit their tens (hundreds) of dependencies. That's "too many".

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troadOP2y ago

Huh? Now I'm quite puzzled. I find both fine to say. I think I make it pretty clear in my comment that dependency use is a per-programmer issue. If you come to Rust with an unquenchable dependency-lust, then yeah, you'll wind up with a Cargo file that looks like the Chicago phonebook. But - here's the kicker - you can do that with C or C++ too! There's really nothing about Rust that requires or recommends this, is my point.

Rust is a generally safer language than C, this much is fairly well established. That alone is an intrinsic advantage. I'm the sort of dev to inline handwritten assembly for a performance boost, so I feel very warmly towards C (which is just assembly in a wig), but for those things where correctness and safety is more important, Rust is simply the better tool.

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