logoalt Hacker News

samdoesnothingyesterday at 6:41 PM2 repliesview on HN

> Anybody who thought the simple action of rewriting things in Rust would eliminate all bugs was hopelessly naive.

Classic Motte and Bailey. Rust is often said "if it compiles it runs". When that is obviously not the case, Rust evangelicals claim nobody actually means that and that Rust just eliminates memory bugs. And when that isn't even true, they try to mischaracterize it as "all bugs" when, no, people are expecting it to eliminate all memory bugs because that's what Rust people claim.


Replies

anon-3988yesterday at 7:10 PM

> Classic Motte and Bailey. Rust is often said "if it compiles it runs".

That claims is overly broad, but its a huge, huge part of it. There's no amount of computer science or verification that can prevent a human from writing the wrong software or specification (let plus_a_b = a - b or why did you give me an orange when I wanted an apple). Unsafe Rust is so markedly different than safe default Rust. This is akin to claiming that C is buggy or broken because people write broken inline ASM. If C can't deal with broken inline ASM, then why bother with C?

show 1 reply
AnIrishDuckyesterday at 7:19 PM

> Classic Motte and Bailey.

For this to be a "classic motte and bailey" you will need to point us to instances where _the original poster_ suggested these (the "bailey", which you characterize as "rust eliminates all bugs") things.

It instead appears that you are attributing _other comments_ to the OP. This is not a fair argumentation technique, and could easily be turned against you to make any of your comments into a "classic motte and bailey".