@alexhall I just tried a quick program with gcc/Linux and reading out of bounds of an array returned a 0 without any error. (I guess that's uninitialized memory or something.)
Rust will panic, which by default will halt the program. The Rust book is comparing with C (many would say because Rust targets programs where traditionally C would be used), so it's quite different in that regard. Although this is the behavior in many other programming languages.
@alexhall bizarre fact I always love to mention. In C, a[b] is nearly exactly the same as b[a], because indexing into an array is adding the index to the memory address, and addition is conmutative.
C is raw in most regards. Rust adds bounds checks. Which means by default array access is a tad slower in Rust. But what might cause a problem in C will halt a Rust program instead of doing bizarre, possibly harmful stuff.
@coder I've used only a very small amount of C. My daily language is PHP, and I'm comfortable in JS and Python. I am familiar with a few other languages, but not enough to do much with them without some research. I'm probably not the primary audience for Rust, having never had to worry about the low-level access C offers.
@alexhall yeah, that's completely fine. Rust has many niceties that are uncommon in other languages, so Rust fans reach for it even when they don't need low-level features... but it's still a bit painful if you're not very good with it.
Most software I work with is better done in Java/Python/etc.
@coder I'm learning it mostly to learn it. I won't use it at work, and I don't do much coding outside of work. Sometimes it's fun to learn a new language just because.
