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I've been doing 'C' for a _long_ time (and I remember and used the =+ and =- operators).
I haven't run into these over-complicated details of 'C'; maybe I've missed them. Elegant,
yes, but over-complicated - no!

You don't see it. Perhaps you're simply too familiar with the thing to see what's right under your nose. The kid does see it. Or maybe he's being a special snowflake. Who knows?

Personally I think C is by no means perfect, there's UB in every nook and cranny, but on balance it's a useful tool for the knowledgeable. If you want overcomplicated, look at PHP. It doesn't have the trickiness that comes with the industrial power simple tools like C sport (and Unix famously has), but it does borrow drawbacks from every idea it incorporates, mainly by failing to understand wtf they're trying to do at every opportunity. And yet the thing is massively popular with a certain class of users. None of whom are very bright when it comes to writing programs, because if they were they'd've ran away screaming long ago. As have the good language developers, and yes, to those in the know, it shows.

Anyway, the "overcomplicated" argument is bunk and obviously reaching. It makes no sense to rewrite in another language the entire code base of a high quality project just because it makes one special snowflake feel safer. Especially not when said snowflake is probably only marginally trustable writing the thing, leaving contributing code so far in the mist it is funny in and of itself already. So the real reason is likely something different. Which it is, in this case. The question is a slur and a political one at that. Notice that rust has become a rallying point for a certain crowd with certain political views and outlooks. So the quoted question was really about politics, and it's fairly safe to say that anyone embracing rust is thereby making a political statement. Just like embracing poetteringware is a political statement, even if many in the scene are incapable of discerning that they are making a political statement by embracing poetteringware, since they got into computing exactly because they wanted nice and predictable things to play with, not those pesky humans and their politicking. The politicking came calling anyway; you can see it because of the fantasticallly poor quality of the code and the design and its mysterious success at adoption in the face of better quality alternatives being readily available. All those technical merit discussions weren't about technical merits. The opposition had lost before they started because their technical arguments weren't about what was really being discussed. And so we're stuck with fantastically bad code doing far too much for comfort and making itself artificially indispensible at a sensitive spot, where it really has no legitimate business being in the first place.

Likewise, the one bid to rust fame so far is in things done by mozilla. The torbrowser project is not mozilla, but heavily dependent on mozilla, so they more or less have little choice to acquiesce. The big thing is that they're not just standing by and have it happen, no, they're going big on embracing rust. So they're convenient poster children that aren't mozilla, making them good propaganda material. They also happen to have quite a strong strand of SJW going on, see the ongoing Appelbaum spat. Politics and code, what could possibly go wrong?

What is taught is being lazy - let the language do all of your thinking

"Well, what else is a computer for?"

This is a common theme in computing. Pervasive, even. Not limited to programming either. The whole "app" fad has shades of this, and so do political attempts at "progress" through "digital transformation", or whatnot. That scourge from that racketeering marketeering company, "windows", is a fine example. "N

> No, I would say that pure C is completely free from landmines.

Oh, it has plenty but remember that C was designed for experienced programmers, not for beginners.

Kind of reminds me of the Hole Hawg versus your typical consumer power drill.

the power drill can be designed so that it only works if the user has both hands on the machine, to at least reduce risk.

Somehow this seems doubly relevant. "After a few such run-ins, when I got ready to use the Hole Hawg my heart actually began to pound with atavistic terror." - so much software right there.

HOLY CRAP that dude is STRONG !


bonus chart

What comes next...a fully functional car made out of paper?

For a nice example see here ftp://ftp.team.net/ktud/pictures/Citroen_2cv/2cv1. jpg

Too bad he's already modded down to the gutter before I got a chance to reference Stephenson's Hole Hawg.

Never heard of the Trabant before.

If nothing else, she was an original.

How could no one mention the TRABANT? My family owned two of these, it was the only car we could get back home without waiting for a decade for a government permit. It was made of cheap carton, really plastic, had 26 horsepower on 2 cylinders, and it totally sounded like a blender in distress. The gear shifter was made of aluminun which wore off every 10000 miles or so, it was a standard replacement like the oil.

There are many Trabant fans in Europe now, some clubs even, which are preserving this true icon of the communism era. I myself have so many memories of this car, including the ones of being made fun of because my father owned one. But it was cheaper than the russian cars (even that is possible) and many times it was more reliable.

Ah, the Trabi :)

-Two stroke engine until the GDR collapsed in 1989. You could always tell if one was around by looking for blue plumes of smoke.

-Bakelite body (I saw a couple of cool Mercedes on Tabby accidents as a paramedic. The Trabant actually disintegrated on impact)

-18hp When the wall came down, they basically got run over by 150mph BMWs and Mercedes on West German roads.

-Horrendously unreliable. As in "I spent more time lying under my car than on my wife".

Trabants, or "Trabis" to friends, were actually from East Germany.

There are a lot of pages online about Trabis, e.g., This one.

While being pretty damn bare-bones as far as automobiles, they do have a cult following. Smoky, noisy, small, yeah, sure, but they would get you from Point A to Point B.

And, as I can attest from personal experience, you haven't lived until you've been driven across a city the size of Budapest in a Trabi (during a rainstorm) along with half a dozen beautiful women pleasantly buzzed on Maibowle.

Maybe next time they should try whitworth units instead.

WTF is a tatra?!?

You must live in Alabama or West Virginia.

A Tatra is a Czech car. They've been making cars for over 100 years.

Here are some production figures for the country's various auto brands. FYI Skoda is now owned by Volkswagen.

Knowing the french they would never, never take a german car for a standard! It would definitely have to be a Citroën 2CV!

Ah, you mean Trabant! wicked little car...