What Rust Looks Like To A C Dev

The linguistic anthropology of programming languages we never asked for but desperately needed. C as Latin? Spot on—ancient, foundational, and nobody actually uses it conversationally anymore. The C++ as French comparison is *chef's kiss*. Needlessly complex rules that somehow make you feel inferior for not mastering them? Oui, c'est vrai. JavaScript as English hits too close to home—everyone cobbles together enough to get by, nobody follows the rules, and it somehow powers the entire world despite being a complete mess. And that Python burn... created to be easy but its users "could benefit from a shower once in a while." I've been in enough Python conferences to confirm this isn't entirely fiction. The Rust/Russian comparison might be the most accurate—passionate evangelists absolutely convinced their way is the only path to salvation. Memory safety or gulag, comrade!

In this parallel universe, everything's just slightly... off. VScode has gone green, React's lost its atom, Rust is having an identity crisis with those dollar signs, PHP actually looks cool, GitHub's fox is on fire, Ubuntu's gone minimal, JavaScript is... well, still JavaScript (some constants across all universes), and that blue creature is what happens when you let Go's mascot hang out with npm for too long. It's like someone described our tech stack to an AI from 2010 and said "just wing it." The multiverse of tech madness where your pull requests would probably create black holes.

The top panel shows the Rust experience: find a library on crates.io, run one command, import it, and you're done. The stick figure even has their arms outstretched in celebration. Meanwhile, C++ is depicted as the ninth circle of dependency hell. Finding libraries across random websites, manually downloading tar files, and engaging in ritual combat with CMake until your build inevitably fails. The stick figures are literally hanging themselves in despair. And this is why some of us drink heavily before attempting to add external libraries to C++ projects.

Ever wondered what actually powers the internet? Turns out it's a magnificent Jenga tower of questionable engineering decisions! From the foundation of electricity (thanks Linus Torvalds and... IBM?) to C developers crafting dynamic arrays with the precision of a caffeinated squirrel. The entire stack balances precariously on unpaid open-source devs while web developers actively sabotage themselves at the top. Meanwhile, Rust devs are just vibing in their own corner with their memory-safe rocket, and whatever Microsoft is doing with that angry bird is probably best left unexamined. My favorite part? Nuclear waste apparently converts to "cookies for fish." The perfect metaphor for legacy code - dangerous, incomprehensible, yet somehow still functional!

C++ developers watching Rust evangelists talk about memory safety is the programming equivalent of a wolf staring down a chihuahua. Sure, the chihuahua is making valid points about not eating the neighbors, but the wolf's been managing just fine with raw power and sharp teeth for decades, thank you very much. After 35 years of manual memory management, we've seen some things. And yeah, maybe we've caused a few segfaults that took down production servers at 2AM, but that's just character building.

JavaScript gets all the love while C, Java, Rust, and others gang up on poor PHP. Then in the shadows, we find the true outcasts: another PHP developer and the mythical Monkey C programmer, sweating nervously because nobody even remembers they exist. The programming language hierarchy in one comic! JavaScript strutting around like it owns the web (it kinda does), while PHP gets bullied despite powering like 80% of the internet. And Monkey C? That's the language you put on your resume when you're hoping the interviewer is too embarrassed to admit they've never heard of it.