Yeah, projects also exist in the real world and practical considerations matter.

The legacy C/C++ code base might slowly and strategically have components refactored into rust, or you might leave it.

The C/C++ team might be interested in trying Rust, but have to code urgent projects in C/C++.

In the same way that if you have a perfectly good felling axe and someone just invented the chain saw, you’re better off felling that tree with your axe than going into town, buying a chainsaw and figuring out how to use it. The axe isn’t really the right tool for the job anymore, but it still works.

C is not how a computer truly works.

If you want to know how computers work, learn assembly and circuit design. You can learn C without ever thinking about registers, register allocation, the program counter, etc.

Although you can learn assembly without ever learning about e.g. branch prediction. There’s tons of levels of abstraction in computers, and many of the lower level ones try to pretend you’ve still got a computer from the 80s even though CPUs are a lot more complex than they used to be.

As an aside, I’ve anecdotally heard of some schools teaching Rust instead of C as a systems language in courses. Rust has a different model than C, but will still teach you about static memory vs the stack vs the heap, pointers, etc.

Honestly, if I had to write some systems software, I’d be way more confident in any Rust code I wrote than C/C++ code. Nasal demons scare me.

Right tool for the job, sure, but that evolves over time.

Like, years back carpenters didn’t have access to table saws that didn’t have safety features that prevent you from cutting off your fingers by stopping the blade as soon as it touches them. Now we do. Are old table saws still the “right tool for the job”, or are they just a dangerous version of a modern tool that results in needless accidents?

Is C still the right tool for the job in places where Rust is a good option?

MicroSD cards are better, here. They’re 250mg; a pigeon can transport 75g. That’s 300 microSD cards, ignoring the weight of the SD card enclosure.

It’s a real quote, from the 80s, published in a networking textbook.

It’s amusing, but it’s always been a serious and occasionally practical observation.

IPoAC is a joke about printing actual IP packets, sending them by pigeon, then scanning them.

You do the whole usual TCP ACK/SYN thing, but with pigeons.

It’s not the same as ‘sneakernet, but strapping microsd cards to a pigeon’. It’s way, way sillier.

I’ve never actually used PHP.

Does it still have random Hebrew in error messages like ‘unexpected T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM’?

The old joke is that C++ is an octopus made by nailing legs to a dog.

So it should probably be a rifle-chaku made by connecting two Garands with a chain.

C# vs Java is also really weird since C# started out as basically a Java clone.