this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2026
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made in gimp, with <3

Context for actual rust programmersI was having massive beef with the rust compiler yesterday, every cargo check takes 20 seconds.

And then look at the three functions below, only one of them are Send, if you know why, please let me know.

(Note: value that is not Send cannot be held across an await point, and Box is not Send)

async fn one() {
    let res: Result<(), Box<dyn Error>> = do_stuff();
    if let Err(err) = res {
        let content = err.to_string();
        let _ = do_stuff(content).await;
    }
}

async fn two() {
    let res: Result<(), Box<dyn Error>> = do_stuff();
    let content = if let Err(err) = res {
        Some(err.to_string())
    } else {
        None
    };
    drop(res);
    if let Some(content) = content {
        let _ = do_stuff(content).await;
    }
}

async fn three() {
    let content = {
        let res: Result<(), Box<dyn Error>> = do_stuff();
        if let Err(err) = res {
            Some(err.to_string())
        } else {
            None
        }
    };
    if let Some(content) = content {
        let _ = do_stuff(content).await;
    }
}

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[–] Object@sh.itjust.works 102 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Rust output is bad? I feel like it's one of the best in terms of telling you where you got things wrong. Nix output when you accidentally get infinite recursion is so bad.

Come to think of it, Nix fits all three better than Rust.

[–] tatterdemalion@programming.dev 39 points 1 week ago (9 children)

People who've never used Rust or only used it once and couldn't grok it like to meme that Rust is bad to cope.

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[–] First_Thunder@lemmy.zip 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Ah yes, the good old random pile of unclear errors because you forgot to add the file in git thanks nix

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 2 points 1 week ago

Is this a comment I'm not flake enough to understand?

[–] anyhow2503@lemmy.world 77 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I get that it's supposed to be a meme, but aside from the first one these aren't even rust stereotypes. Is this a meme specifically for people who haven't used rust, know nothing about rust but have maybe heard that it's a programming language?

[–] nightlily@leminal.space 28 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah, part of the point of Rust is that it does exactly what you tell it - sometimes to the point of absurdity. No implicit casting for instance.

[–] MoffKalast@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

And here I was thinking most of our programming problems come from the thing doing exactly what we told it to, but didn't quite think the process through enough. Or at all.

[–] Fontasia@feddit.nl 14 points 1 week ago

This is for people who learnt C++ in 2008 and refuse to believe that they've never fucked up a malloc in their lives

[–] BlueKey@fedia.io 56 points 1 week ago (3 children)

output makes no sense

C++ template errors enter the room

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Template errors make sense as long as you carefully read the entire error, but nobody has ever actually done that.

[–] marcos@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You are saying that the error messages terminate at some point?

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Well, yeah, templates won't recurse beyond 1,024 levels.

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That's an implementation-defined behaviour.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

I like to pretend that gcc is the only compiler

[–] Courantdair@jlai.lu 6 points 1 week ago

boost::msm errors enter the room

[–] Ooops@feddit.org 37 points 1 week ago

So a narrow but clear win for the Rust compiler still...

[–] kibiz0r@midwest.social 35 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] leo85811nardo@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago

Deterministic when hit by that weird cosmic ray: ❌❌

/jk

[–] Courantdair@jlai.lu 30 points 1 week ago
cargo() {
  cargo $@
  echo So how you doin\' today?
}

Fixed

[–] Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 29 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I thought the rust compiler was supposed to be polite and helpful (unlike gcc, or nix).

[–] Sibbo@sopuli.xyz 49 points 1 week ago

It is, this meme is just trash.

[–] kibiz0r@midwest.social 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 week ago

You create a new file and don't check it into git yet.

Nix commands: "I've never met this file in my life!"

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

gcc was unhelpful a couple decades ago. I've found it to be rather helpful in recent years.

[–] verdare@piefed.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah, recent versions of GCC have gotten a lot better. I suspect it’s actually because of languages like Rust raising the bar.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago (3 children)

They literally did. They theorized that Rust influenced GCC's improved error messaging. That could not have happened if GCC improved their error messaging prior to the existence of Rust.

[–] fruitcantfly@programming.dev 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

But GCC did not improve their error messages (much) prior to Rust, despite Clang's error messages comparing favorably to GCC even before Rust 1.0 was released, as for example discussed in

https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/ClangDiagnosticsComparison?action=recall&rev=1

Rust itself is 14 years old, slightly older than above wiki page, and even back then it had great error messages, though they've also improved since. Here's a fun site where you can see how error messages have evolved through Rust's life:

https://kobzol.github.io/rust/rustc/2025/05/16/evolution-of-rustc-errors.html

It's only very recently that GCC has started to catch up, for example with some nice improvements in GCC 15:

https://developers.redhat.com/articles/2025/04/10/6-usability-improvements-gcc-15

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Oh, guess my mental timeline is wrong!

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[–] kubica@fedia.io 24 points 1 week ago

cargo delete this_post

[–] Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 10 points 1 week ago

I love the rust compiler, it makes debugging so easy

[–] PlexSheep@infosec.pub 7 points 1 week ago

This is an awful "meme"

[–] cadekat@pawb.social 5 points 1 week ago

Just a guess, but are you missing + Send on your error type?

[–] Cevilia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 week ago

sometimes?! Cargo never makes sense to me!

[–] Noja@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 week ago

First mistake was using async

[–] psud@aussie.zone 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

https://xkcd.com/303/ vs this guy who thinks 20 seconds is a long time

[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

I've done professional work on an old Unix system where the full build was more than 2 hours, and an incremental stop-rebuild-restart cycle was 20 minutes.

You get to where you really stare at your edits for a while before you hit build.

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 1 points 1 week ago

"This could take like a hundred milliseconds. It could even take gasp ONE WHOLE SECOND! 😱"

[–] REDACTED@infosec.pub 2 points 1 week ago

It never asks me :(

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