The Pilgrimage To Rust

When the Rust logo itself is literally oxidized and corroded, you know someone's having a laugh at the language's expense. The joke plays on Rust being named after actual rust (iron oxide) while the fake news headline accuses it of causing "society to decay" – which is ironic because Rust was specifically designed to prevent memory corruption and system decay. The "Western disease" framing is chef's kiss satire. Rust evangelists are notorious for their zealous advocacy, treating memory safety like a moral imperative. Some developers joke that Rustaceans act like they've discovered enlightenment while the rest of us peasants are still using garbage collectors and segfaulting like it's 1995. The borrow checker might feel authoritarian when you're fighting it at 2 AM, but at least it won't let your code cause undefined behavior. Unlike certain governments, Rust's strict rules actually prevent things from falling apart.

Going from Rust's memory safety back to C++ is like voluntarily choosing to juggle chainsaws after experiencing the bliss of juggling nerf balls. "Oh, you mean I get to manage my own memory again? And deal with dangling pointers? And segmentation faults? How... wonderful ." Nothing quite like the existential dread of realizing you've spent the last hour debugging an issue caused by forgetting to free memory that was allocated 500 lines ago. The compiler isn't holding your hand anymore—it's more like it's holding the door open to chaos and saying "have fun!"

The ultimate betrayal for any Rust evangelist: discovering your favorite game or tool isn't actually built with the language you've been preaching about for years. That wide-eyed cat perfectly captures the existential crisis of realizing you've been living a lie. "Memory safe? What memory safe? I've been recommending IMPOSTERS this whole time!" The Rust community in a nutshell - simultaneously the most enthusiastic and most disappointed group in programming. They'll tell you Rust is the solution... right until they find out it wasn't the solution this time.

Ah, the eternal Rust evangelism strike force and their undying optimism! The meme shows the slow descent into madness of someone waiting for C/C++ to finally die off. Starting in 2015: "Any day now!" By 2018: "Hmm, checking my watch, should be happening soon..." 2022: "I'll just lie down here in this field of broken promises." And finally 2025: "Just bury me with my memory-safe abstractions." Meanwhile, C++ is still running literally everything important in the world. Sorry Rustaceans, those 40-year-old codebases aren't rewriting themselves—no matter how many times you mention "fearless concurrency" at the company holiday party.

The peaceful Python enthusiast gets absolutely demolished by the language war veterans. JavaScript zealots, Java supremacists, and Rust evangelists are ready to throw hands over their preferred syntax... meanwhile ABAP and COBOL developers are just sweating nervously in the corner wondering if anyone remembers they exist. Nothing triggers developers quite like suggesting another language might be better for a task. After 15 years in the industry, I've learned the best programming language is whichever one pays your mortgage this month.

Ah, the Rust evangelism strike force in their natural habitat. Above ground, we have the beautiful C language basking in the sunlight, nurturing an ecosystem that's been thriving for decades. Meanwhile, underground, the Grim Reaper himself is filming a documentary about the angry Rust crab that's convinced everyone C programmers are just one null pointer dereference away from total system collapse. After 20 years in this industry, I've seen this movie before. Some poor C dev is just trying to climb out of the pit while Rust zealots are down there with their memory safety pitchforks and ownership model torches. Sure, my code segfaults occasionally, but at least I don't have to fight the borrow checker at 3 AM while questioning my career choices.