The economics of code safety, or why Rust is not needed

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I read the article Parallelism with shared state in Rust and noticed that its general meaning can be expressed by the well-known phrase: “do what must be done, and what must not be done — do not do”. In other words, it is exactly the same advice that can be given to a developer of any other programming language, for example C++.

And I decided not to continue the discussion in the comments, but to express my opinion as a short article describing a fundamental economic model of software development that does not contribute (and objectively should not contribute) to a mass transition from C/C++ to “safe” alternatives. Because, due to the peculiarities of cost distribution, the software developer has no economic motivation for the complete elimination of errors, and as a consequence — for the transition to the use of “safe” programming languages.

C++ safety and Buridan's mice in IT

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In IT there is a strange form of “informational inertia”: when a phrase once landed well on reality, became a quote, turned into a marker of “one of us” — and then continued to live on its own. Reality moved on, practices changed, tools became different, the economics of development flipped over, but the cliché of the formulation remained. And it is repeated especially willingly by those who need to write quickly and convincingly, but have no time (or competence) to sort out the technical details.

Economy on TrustLang

The economics of code safety, or why Rust is not needed

C++ safety and Buridan's mice in IT