I’ve been doing some personal projects that involve programming in C++ for a while now. I’ve been using Rust for the last year to program in the safe and concurrent language. As far as I’ve experienced, Rust is an excellent language. I love it and want to use it for more things. It made me question why I use C++ to write a project like this. Why do I find C++ so annoying and why can’t I use Rust for this project? This article is the result of that thought, so let’s compare C++ vs Rust.
I had read a post on the Rust forums, and it made me ponder, and I think there’s good stuff in it. It talked about how Rust allows you to write more concise code than C++, which has led to people being able to write libraries, tools, etc. in Rust. I think the language is a good fit for such things.
The problem I have with the Rust forum post is that it focused mainly on that point. It didn’t really explain how. So I thought I would write this article, which will look at the pros and cons of using C++, and the advantages of using Rust, and how it can be used to get similar results.
C++
C++ is a language that allows you to write programs in it, that do anything you can imagine. It has everything you need, from simple functions and control structures, to complex classes with virtual functions, inheritance, inheritance, etc. You can do everything you want. And it’s easy to do. Not only that, you have excellent standards such as STL, Boost and the entire GNU coding standard to rely on, as well as all the things found in modern language design such as RAII. However, C++ comes with quite a few cons.
So, here’s what I feel are the most important pros and cons of using C++ for software development:
Pros
Conveniently packaged, standard, and well-supported. This makes it incredibly easy to get started with. It also makes it easy to integrate into existing C/C++ projects, such as libraries and frameworks. In fact, the STL is included in every C++ compiler. It also allows C++ to integrate with everything.
Easy to get help. It’s a well-known language. So when learning a language, C++ is a great choice.
It’s fast. C++ is one of the fastest languages available. Only C or Assembly language are faster than C++.
Modular. You can design classes, functions, etc. individually. This makes it easy to integrate new things easily, and is especially useful for large projects. It also allows the class, function, or whatever to have access to the system’s libraries easily.
Well-designed. The C++ language is designed to be easy to use. I find it much easier to write code in C++ than in most other languages.
Modern C++. There’s a lot of modern stuff available to the developer, such as RAII, smart pointers, etc. and a lot of smart people working on the language.
Cons
Lacks flexibility. It is a fairly rigid language, with a lot of restrictions and rules. This is especially true when compared to other languages such as Ruby or Python, which have a very loose syntax and can express themselves freely.
C++ is not easy. It can be much more difficult to use C++ than to use most other programming languages. This is especially true with the use of “operator overloading.”
More verbose. When coding in C++, you often have to type many lines of code to achieve the same functionality as in many other languages. This makes C++ harder to read than many other languages. It can also make C++ slower than other languages to program in.
C++ uses very long functions. This makes the code harder to read and maintain.
C++ is not intuitive. C++ can be much less intuitive than many other languages. This makes it very hard to pick up if you’ve never programmed in C++ before.
Rust
One of the newest languages to gain widespread adoption is Rust, which is a systems programming language originally created by Mozilla. Rust is more powerful than C++ and is a statically-typed, compiled programming language. It is similar to other compiled languages, such as C and C#, in that it generates native machine code for the platform it runs on.
Pros
Strong static typing. When working with the Rust compiler, you get very strict type checking that is more precise than you might get with other statically-typed languages.
Fast (but slower if compared to C++). While using Rust, the code you write runs very quickly. This makes the code more readable and more efficient. This makes Rust a very efficient language to code in.
Rust allows you to create safe and correct code. You can also limit what you can do with the language through macros. This helps you code more safely.
Rust offers a lot of flexibility. It is not a very rigid language, and allows you to make your code more flexible if you want to. This flexibility can make your code more efficient and easier to use.
Rust helps you to work with large-scale applications. As it is a systems programming language, it makes it possible to create large applications without a lot of code overhead.
Cons
As Rust is a systems programming language, you cannot use it directly with the web. While there are tools that you can use to compile your Rust code to use directly with the web, you may not want to do this.
Rust is young. Rust is very young, and the Rust community is very small. As a result, this means that it’s possible to make bugs. Rust will get better as more people start using it, so it will be less likely that you will find bugs.
Rust is somewhat complex. It can be a bit complex to learn, but as it is a systems programming language, it has some interesting and powerful concepts to learn, which means that you can learn Rust quickly.
Rust is not as user friendly as other popular programming languages. As Rust is a system programming language, the syntax and language of Rust are more focused on doing things with the computer. This makes Rust a bit hard for a lot of people to use.
Conclusion – C++ vs Rust
Rust is a system programming language, which means that it is focused on making your code safe, correct, flexible, and efficient. It is a language that is focused on doing things with the computer.
C++ is a general programming language. C++ allows you to do many different things, but it also adds some complexity to your code, and some of those are not particularly good. It is a language that is focused on making your code portable, which means that your code will run in different places, and this has its cost.