What's Stopping You From Writing Your Rust Like This?

Ah, the classic "C/C++ is dead" narrative that's been circulating since approximately the Jurassic period. This meme perfectly captures the eternal resilience of C/C++ despite countless obituaries written by trendy language evangelists. Every few years, some shiny new language comes along promising to be the "C++ killer" - yet there's C/C++, smugly posing next to its own grave, refusing to die. Meanwhile, critical infrastructure, operating systems, game engines, and performance-critical applications are still running on these supposedly "ancient" languages. The smirk says it all: "Nice try, Rust/Go/whatever... I've been declared dead more times than a soap opera villain, and I'm still powering the world while you're trying to figure out your package manager."

Congratulations! You've found the only relationship where emotional abuse is actually a feature, not a bug. The Rust compiler treats you like garbage, tells you everything is your fault, and makes you feel utterly inadequate—but unlike your ex, it's deliberately doing this to make you a better person. That error message showing you exactly where you messed up? That's not passive-aggressive—that's just aggressive-aggressive. And that warm fuzzy feeling when your code finally compiles? It's Stockholm syndrome with benefits. At least the compiler is consistent and actually helps you grow, unlike certain humans who can't be tamed even with unsafe{} blocks. Honestly, it's the healthiest toxic relationship you'll ever have.

The eternal cycle of Rust developers. First panel: "OH NO!" - when they realize their code might panic. Second panel: "ANYWAY" - as they slap on a .expect("This will never happen") and continue coding like nothing happened. It's basically the programming equivalent of putting duct tape over a check engine light. Sure, your code compiles, but that error is just waiting to blow up in production.

Finally, a political compass that makes sense! Instead of left vs. right, we've got "System Lang" vs "Toy Lang" - because nothing starts a flame war faster than calling someone's favorite language a "toy." And instead of authoritarian vs libertarian, we've got "Obsolete Lang" vs "Nu Lang" - where COBOL programmers are still making bank while the rest of us chase shiny new frameworks every six months. The placement is savage. Assembly and C sitting proudly in the "real systems" corner while Python and Ruby hang out in the "scripting for children" zone. And poor Brainfuck got exiled to the furthest corner possible - exactly where it belongs. This is basically a Rorschach test for developers. Whatever quadrant your favorite language is in tells everyone exactly what kind of programmer you are... and whether anyone wants to sit next to you at lunch.

The C++ programmer's 3 AM nightmare in full display. First the Rust evangelists tell you your beloved language is "unsafe" and you need to switch. Then they warn that all your code will be rewritten in Rust anyway, so prepare for unemployment. Finally, the dream escalates to its horrifying conclusion: "QUIT HAVING FUN" – because how dare you enjoy your pointer arithmetic and manual memory management? It's the programming equivalent of vegans telling meat-eaters they'll die of heart disease while you're just trying to enjoy your steak. Meanwhile, the C++ dev lies awake, haunted by the thought that maybe – just maybe – they should learn Rust before their GitHub contributions become vintage artifacts in the Computer History Museum.

Someone wrote a manifesto about how using C, C++, Python, or vanilla JavaScript in production is basically corporate negligence, advocating for Rust, Go, and TypeScript instead. The reply? "Nonsense. If your code has reached the point of unmaintainable complexity, then blame the author, not the language." Classic developer blame game. The first person is basically saying "your tools are bad and you should feel bad," while the second person fires back with "skill issue, not language issue." Both are technically correct, which makes this argument eternal. The reality? Yeah, modern languages with better type systems and memory safety do prevent entire classes of bugs. But also yeah, a terrible developer can write unmaintainable garbage in any language, including Rust. You can't memory-safety your way out of 10,000-line functions and zero documentation. The real takeaway: if you're shipping production code in 2025 without considering memory safety and type guarantees, you're making a choice. Just make sure it's an informed one, not a "we've always done it this way" one.