A programming language should not be your identity.

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A brief opinion piece arguing that Rust, despite its genuine strengths in tooling, expressiveness, and memory safety, is just a programming language and should not become part of a developer's identity. The author criticizes the tendency of some Rust enthusiasts to be dogmatic, dismissive of alternatives like C or Zig, and unwilling to acknowledge the language's complexity or design flaws. The broader point is that tools are tools, not moral choices or markers of wisdom.

Rust is Just a Tool

Of course it is. That’s no such thing as a perfect language.
People tend to treat their own choices and opinions almost as a religion of sorts. As if they’re afraid that when someone challenges their opinions, it stops being valid. They don’t have to, but if they do, that means they either weren’t valid in the first place, weren’t well thought through (semi-valid) or you’re just note secure enough with them, as they might lack merit (e.g. you’re on a “hype train” with others, so you don’t have any means to defend your opinion). It’s you, who have to know the difference before you start discussing it.
Everything we use: languages, IDEs, browsers, phones, OSes are just tools that we like, we know how to use efficiently and we’ve come to learn and love. We’re most productive using them and at the end of the day, that’s what matters to us.
That being said, we might suggest them to others and we might take suggestions in. Suggestions however aren’t forceful by nature - no one can just go “this is inefficient, use something else [stupid]” (yeah, that last part is how we might feel) - that’s not a suggestion, that’s shaming. You can be on either side of this, so please do remember to discuss your preferences in a non-forceful fashion: “I use X, because it’s easier for me to do Y with it, you should try it sometimes”, “oh, I don’t mind doing Y using Z, but Z makes me faster when doing ABC, which is more important to me” - you get the point: personal experience exchange - non-forceful.
If we all started to communicate like that, flame wars would vanish. 😉

Btw arch is just arch on the same note