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Re:Teaching C (2016) by blub on Tuesday October 30, 2018 @08:37AM (#18335912)
I agree with you regarding existing software - I don't think it's worth discussing too much about, since that software will either live on "forever" or be outright replaced, rather than being rewritten.

I was mainly referring to new projects, where C continues to be selected because of a myriad of reasons, none related to technical uniqueness or superiority.

This is truly infuriating, because we will collectively pay for those poor choices in security vulnerabilities.

Re:Teaching C (2016) by simias on Tuesday October 30, 2018 @03:13PM (#18340328)
Stability and being able to find developer who will maintain the project 5 years from now are still very pragmatical arguments though. Again, I love Rust but I still don't feel comfortable pushing it for critical components at work because who knows where it'll be 5 years from now? Is it here to stay? If I leave my job will they find people to take over?

Furthermore even brand new projects will have to interface with existing code to some extent. C bindings are everywhere, Rust not always. And even when they exist they're not always complete and are often quite experimental.

Still, I'm doing my part and I did write a few smaller components of my current project in Rust at work. But it's not surprising that the shift is not happening overnight.