Reasonable Performance

Rust and C

| 1 min read

I'm seeing too much comparison on the internet about why C is unsafe and Rust is safe. True. But they are NOT even the same class of language.

C is minimal. The compiler is easy to write. Even nicknamed portable assembler for how low-level it is. Rust on the other hand, is a big, complicated language with many features. And a massive standard library. It's not even close. Here's a short list of features Rust have but C does not.

  • Generics
  • Traits
  • Pattern matching
  • Containers
  • Reference counting
  • Object oriented programming
  • First class functions
  • Multithreading primitives
  • Slice
  • Resizible string

C++ is a much fairer comparison. However, it is not C-with-classes, not in the past decade. It supports most Rust does support. With the noticiable exception of the borrow checker, context free grammar and a built-in build system. Also, no one is using raw pointers in C++ anymore.

No one writes this in 2023:

Label* label = new Label();
label->setText("Hello World");

Instead we do this:

auto label = std::make_unique<Label>();
label->setText("Hello World");
Make valid arguments next time.