Just to clarify so people don’t misinterpret me again. Rust is a great language. It supports FP and I love FP. Rust authors managed to make a lot of this right. But creating a new great language is an easy problem. Not in a sense that it’s trivial. But in a sense that new languages are not encumbered with legacy decisions. They don’t have to make hard choices (yet) to maintain backwards compatibility. They can reap the benefits of other’s mistakes and just don’t introduce them from the start. It’s much harder to actually improve an existing language in a meaningful way and make lives of millions of devs easier without breaking things. It’s a slow and arduous process. I know it. But assuming you can easily rewrite existing software to a new shiny language is naive beyond delusional. In 10 years, Rust will suffer the exact same problem as C++ They won’t be able to add new exciting features without breaking stuff. So they’ll have to make compromises. And devs will start complaining that Rust has a dozen ways to do the same thing. You know what else will happen in the next 40 years? A dozen of new programming languages. It’s very naive to think we achieved a global optimum of programming languages today and Rust is the best we can ever create. Programming Language Theory advances every year, and in 10-20 years we can easily see a new exciting language with groundbreaking innovations. What we’ll have is an ever growing zoo of languages. Software Engineers will be expected to know even more languages and switch between them even quicker. The cycle continues.
The hill I'm willing to die on is that every person who holds similar beliefs has never worked in a big company like Bloomberg, Meta, or Google

Nov 5, 2025 · 10:11 AM UTC

Replying to @ChShersh
This is one of those moments where I see someone who could help make something better but realize it may never happen. It would be rad if you collaborated with rust for development.
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I spent 10 years making the world better by contributing to Haskell and OCaml. I’m done.
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Replying to @ChShersh
Java somehow managed to avoid that for the most part, across decades, I don't know if the current pace of modernizing, which I wholeheartedly approve, will make this come to an end, but for the time being they seem intent on backwards compatibility and slow pace of feature growth
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C++ is the same. Mature languages evolve while still maintaining backwards compatibility.
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Replying to @ChShersh
In this sense, a good language is one that can bear a huge legacy, survive, and continue to develop. C++ is a good language.
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Agree. I think Java managed to achieve this well enough too.
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Replying to @ChShersh
> In 10 years, Rust will suffer the exact same problem as C++ But by the same logic, in 10 years C++ will suffer even more. The newer language will always be newer no matter how much time has passed
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Yet, having 1000 projects in 3 different languages is magnitudes worse than having them all in one language.
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Replying to @ChShersh
all im seeing is arguments for why we should embrace rust for projects who dont heavily depend on c++ "new thing will get outdated in few decades" how is that an argument against moving forward? is the alternative not moving at all? the cycle continues? thats every tech ever
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I’m seeing different things. Rust is being promoted as C and C++ killer. They don’t only tell to start new projects in Rust but also rewrite existing ones. It becomes even more fanatical when Ubuntu forcefully ships Rust replacements with bugs of core tools. I won’t be so against Rust if its marketing and promotion weren’t so aggressive.
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Replying to @ChShersh
See the problem here is that you are assuming that Rust worshippers are going to read all of that I spent yesterday trying to explain to a person that Rust isn't the only language with LTS and Backwards Compatibility & their argument was go write C++ software
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This post is mostly for reasonable people
Replying to @ChShersh
With Rust and Zig, for the first time, we have memory-safe languages without garbage collection. That's why everything is being rewritten. This isn't about a flashy new abstraction, but an absolute necessity.
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Memory-safety without garbage collection is overrated. It’s a very narrow use case. Languages with a good GC like OCaml work even better for cases where you don’t require precise memory control.
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Replying to @ChShersh
Yes but have you considered that Rust has [minor syntax improvement]
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Replying to @ChShersh
Of course it will have the same problems in the future. For now though the current new languages Rust and Zig have learned from past issues and started on a clean slate. That is why developers can choose to continue on languages that have baggage or jump to newer languages without baggage. So it's up to each developer to choose what feels best for them considering their own preferences and career possibilities. Most C++ old timers can most likely retire before C++ is replaced. It's also not sure how AI will reshape the programming language landscape. Perhaps we will have other types of languages that are optimal for reading and then AI transforms that into lower level code. Some kind of pseudo code.
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Replying to @ChShersh
Agreed that there'll be "new rust" every decade, but I'm not sure how any of this relates to the original post? Nobody said anything about rewriting existing applications in Rust. Nobody said anything about continuance of the cycle. Even the proto-original post was more on the line of "next generations will write in Rust". Actually on this topic, look no further than JS/TS. I spent about 10 years writing exclusively in C. Today I daily drive Rust and I love it. The original point stands.
Replying to @ChShersh
Maybe it’s one of the reasons why we have two Go Lang versions
Replying to @ChShersh
You should think of this as a gene pool of languages. They compete, breed, reproduce, and mutate. Some become dominant, out of fitness or luck or circumstance. The pool as a whole survives because this lets it adapt to changes in its environment.
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Replying to @ChShersh
Rust will win over C++ for one big reason: as AI writes the code, we will feel it is safer if it passes the Rust compiler, than a C++ compiler. Rust is a language AND a compile-time safety manager / guardrail preventing typical resource issues e.g. threading, memory. It doesn't just create binaries but also prevents certain binaries from being created. This will likely extend to atypical resources as their complexity and risk augments. Probably even to the network stack level. Maybe not in Rust itself, in the future, we will likely have Antirust or ZYX++ or something. And it won't need to be easily human comprehensible. There will be tools for that. At some point you can expect less than 10% or even 1% of new code will even get reviewed by humans, let alone written. Instead, we can anticipate new languages will optimize for AI code writing. Even more, AI will also write the self-hosted compilers for these languages. If no one does it, then I will. So its just an eventuality!
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Replying to @ChShersh
Well I definitely agree to the point, that new languages would certainly seem/be better because they have worked on the problems existing langs face. Also the problems that exist in current timeline might not exist in future and for the new problems Rust need to break some stuff and build some new stuff to deal with them and there can be major changes in the compiler. Legacy projects already existing in C/C++ aren't needed to migrate to Rust because that will waste a lot of time until n unless it causes a major change. And for the fact that whatever code we right, we need to understand that its a set of instruction for the system to perform certain tasks, no matter what the language is, so 40 different language writing a tokenizer might have different set of performance but will serve the same problem statement.
Replying to @ChShersh
Rust won't be nearly in as good a shape as C++. Stroustrup was a master at evolving a language without cheating and without abandoning extremely hard learned core principles. Rust simply doesn't have this. You're observation about evolving languages is spot on. Rust is utterly unprepared and doesn't have the foundations necessary to do it especially in light of the non-technical aspects of its community distracting things. Certainly a promising interesting language from a tech perspective. But it's going about things the Wrong Way (TM).
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Replying to @ChShersh
so you're saying the hard part is convincing people, not writing the syntax
Replying to @ChShersh
Rust brought the borrow checker, match statements, traits, and a first class package manager. If every language going forward could please use those things, id be happy
Replying to @ChShersh
But that's good tho. Rewrite in Rust solves a multi faceted problem. - Engineers get to learn and rearchitect - Business get to say "oh we have adopted rust" - Marketers get to say "Our code is safe because it's powered by rust" While the core issue is repaying tech debt. They could rewrite in C++ and still have all the benefits but business will never allow that to happen. We might see some Rust -> C++ migrations as well.
Replying to @ChShersh
I agree with this take: I am using Rust, I love Rust, but for sure think work on new languages should not only continue but accelerate.
Replying to @ChShersh
mojo doing the ol' "let me learn from everyone's mistakes" move before it gets weighed down by legacy baggage too
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Replying to @ChShersh
Rust is too low-level to make a revolution
Replying to @ChShersh
Honestly, building a great language is one thing, but getting the world to adopt it is the real challenge.
Replying to @ChShersh
I do think we should be pushing back on the need to know so many things. To be an expert at everything is to be expert at nothing.
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Come join us making PixelArt. Almost anything is allowed. Normal art greatly appreciated but we won't judge you!
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