There is a reason "I will never be able to get the control I need (but I don't know)" or "I'll have to use unsafe everywhere (but I haven't tried)" are anti-Rust tropes. It's possible for certain game dev patterns to be awkward in Rust (really interested in hearing more about these!), but these other criticisms smell less like highly relevant informed criticism, and more like one hasn't tried Rust, as much as surface-level, mole hill criticism of hypothetical or pathological instances of bad syntax do.
It isn't that one uses raw pointers. It's much more an attitude I've witnessed in younger programmers that if they're not doing it in C/C++, they're not doing the thing. It's about vibes as much as anything else, and I think, when their heros use their own vibe-level criticisms, they only reinforce that perspective.
> Or, perhaps when you say they act big about using pointers, do you mean that they act big about using pointers safely?
No, I wasn't thinking of that, but that's another part of it. And now that you mention it, "My code doesn't have any of these issues" can be yet another defensive tact.
Do you have something you'd like to offer the discussion?
Or, perhaps when you say they act big about using pointers, do you mean that they act big about using pointers safely? Because that is different. That's a conversation I began declining to have because I no longer believe it's possible for a person who is trying to use C++ for a task, and has already decided it is the best available tool for that task, to have that conversation with pretty much anybody without it devolving into a pissing match.