this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2026
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Why is Rust so bare-bones? (programming.dev)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by cx40@programming.dev to c/rust@programming.dev
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Is it just me, or does Rust feel much more bare-bones than other languages? I just started learning it recently and this is the one thing that stood out to me, much more so than the memory management business. A lot of things that would normally be part of the language has to be achieved through meta-programming in Rust.

Is this a deliberate design choice? What do we gain from this setup?

Edits:

  1. Somehow, this question is being interpreted as a complaint. It's not a complaint. As a user, I don't care how the language is designed as long as it has a good user experience, but the curious part of my mind always wants to know why things are the way they are. Maybe another way to phrase my question: Is this decision to rely more on meta-programming responsible for some of the good UX we get in Rust? And if so, how?
  2. I'm using meta-programming to mean code that generates code in the original language. So if I'm programming in Rust, that would be code that generate more Rust code. This excludes compilation where Rust gets converted into assembly or any other intermediate representation.
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[โ€“] 6nk06@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Source needed because the Rust library is bigger than the STL, no one cares about print being a macro, and derivation being an issue only applies when you compare Rust to scripting languages.

Rust is a contender to C and C++, not Visual Basic that can do everything poorly.

A lot of things that would normally be part of the language

Give examples because println is not convincing. Why would you have println on an embedded system that has no display?

[โ€“] cx40@programming.dev 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I'm not saying that there's a problem with doing things one way or another. Rather, I'm asking whether there's a problem with doing things differently that then led to this design decision to be made with Rust. I want to better understand how this language came to be.