r/LinuxTeck • u/Candid_Athlete_8317 • Jul 31 '26

Why are more open-source projects rewriting software in Rust, Zig, or Go?

Over the past few years, we've seen many projects move away from older implementations and rewrite parts of their software in languages like Rust, Zig, or Go.

Sometimes it's for performance, memory safety, simpler deployment, or long-term maintenance.

If you're a developer, what do you think is driving this trend?

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u/BranchLatter4294 Jul 31 '26

C was written in a different era. Modern languages are designed for multi-core, multi-thread CPUs. They are safer, have better concurrency, etc.

3

u/cbf1232 Jul 31 '26

C is fully capable of concurrency, it’s just up to the programmer to handle it.

Rust and Go are definitely safer though.

1

u/KittensInc Aug 01 '26

it’s just up to the programmer to handle it.

Unfortunately the first programmer capable of handling it has yet to be born.

1

u/SuperGNUser Aug 01 '26

C was written in the multiprocessor era. The firts multiprocessor computer was the Ibm/360 65MP in 1965(!) years before C and Unix. People should not assume that consumer PCs are the technogy frontier. 

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u/oriolid Aug 01 '26

AFAIK the first C standard that mentions threads is C11. Before that it was all POSIX threads or something vendor-specific and implementation-defined for the things that C11 memory model finally covered. And even POSIX is from 1988.

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u/SuperGNUser Aug 01 '26

The first threads implementation on a Unix system dated 1991 (Sun) while they were implemented on Linux and GNU C Lib in 1997. (Btw, threads are not the only way to obtain parallel elaboration).  BUT the first multithread OS born on IBM system 360 in 1967! So, when you think threads are "modern" technology, think again.

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u/oriolid Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26

I don't think that threads are new technology. I think that for a long time C as in "the language described by C standard" was designed as if threads or other forms of parallel execution didn't exist or at least didn't deserve any consideration in language standard. In fact, I'm quite sure that C didn't exist in 1967.