On: Ask HN: Learn C++11 or Rust in 2022?

[jdrek1]

Unless you're manually implementing data structures or something similar you basically never need to manage your memory manually in modern C++. std::vector takes care of most your needs and smart pointers exist for the few cases where it doesn't. There's not really a lot of difference to Rust there except that OOB access is a panic in Rust and (most likely) a segfault in C++ but you can trivially enable that checking by putting the STL in debug mode.

C++'s problem is that most people never learn it properly and think "C/C++" is a thing because most courses/tutorials are stuck in the 90s and effectively teach shitty C with classes and iostream. Rust is great and has really nice features which I'd like to have in C++ too (like pattern matching) but memory safety is really not an issue in proper modern C++. I'm aware that this is a bit of a "you're just holding it wrong" but pretty much all languages have things you shouldn't do anymore once they evolve, it's just more obvious in the one with strong backwards compatibility requirements to the ancient language created before all the modern research into language design.

[umanwizard → jdrek1]

It's entirely possible to invoke memory unsafety in modern C++.

    std::vector<int> v {1, 2, 3};
    int& x = something(v);
    something_else(std::move(v));
    x = 42;

Is this UB? Impossible to tell without examining the code of the functions involved!

[jdrek1 → umanwizard]

Nobody said it's impossible, it's just generally not an issue if you write normal code (read: stop treating C++ as C, they are completely different languages). There's only very little difference in how much you need to think about lifetimes and stuff between Rust and modern C++, it's far from being "hard". Sure Rust holds your hands a bit more in those regards but you can also just turn on address sanitizer and friends and then you have a very similar experience.