&gt;&gt; Compare this to Rust compiler: you start with nothing but C(++? I don&#x27;t
remember) compiler, and end with Rust compiler. No intermediate download
involved.<p>&gt; This is incorrect. Rust has been self-hosting for years.<p>Incorrect in that Rust actually downloads something, as steveklabnik pointed.
I admit that I expected more from Rust, and I feel disappointed the same with
the compiler as with Cargo.<p>But your premise that self-hosted language automatically means that
bootstrapping can&#x27;t be done using C or C++ is false. Compare that with OCaml
and GHC.<p>&gt; The fact that you didn&#x27;t even know that Rust is self-hosted is proof that it really doesn&#x27;t matter to the user—it was so invisible you didn&#x27;t notice it!<p>It could be tried to read as that, if it was a fact. I did expect Rust to be
self-hosted, just it is a custom that bootstrapping compiler is written in
something else.<p>Look at how OCaml or GHC (Haskell) are built. Both allow to use C compiler to
compile them (even though they generally advise to use pre-compiled
compilers).