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Rust and the Future of Systems Programming [video]

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Re: Rust and the Future of Systems Programming [video]

#3

Post by wyldfire »

> GC pause ... sufficiently low power hw .. cheap phone

Yeah, but even high-powered hardware can take a "major" hit from a GC pause when your application is extremely latency sensitive.

IMO it would be great to get folks who write the enormous base of existing realtime apps driving critical devices everywhere to sit up and take notice of Rust.

EDIT: I mean to say that many of my colleagues who write realtime software dismiss new languages as including GC baggage by default (because so many do!). So, hey, good that the video calls this out.

Re: Rust and the Future of Systems Programming [video]

#4

Post by enqk »

Although I am not against improving the safety of languages we use for system programming, the model that Rust advocates are pushing of "preventing mistakes" as a way to make systems secure doesn't convince me.

Mistakes (and security breaches) happen. A system should be written in such a way as mistakes are few, indeed, however it is essential to also efficiently protect our users' assets (data) first, assuming that mistakes are being made.

Ideally as a user I should not care much, nor can I trust that all software is "mistake free." I need the assurance and the tools to guarantee that 1) mistakes are detected 2) my data/privacy/identity is protected.

Re: Rust and the Future of Systems Programming [video]

#5

Post by vvanders »

wyldfire wrote: post #3

> GC pause ... sufficiently low power hw .. cheap phone Yeah, but even high-powered hardware can take a "major" hit from a GC pause when your application is extremely latency sensitive. IMO it would be great to get folks who write the enormous base of existing realtime apps driving critical devices everywhere to sit up and take notice of Rust. EDIT: I mean to say that many of my colleagues who write realtime software…

It's starting to go that way but that's a very hard space to push new things into. I talk with all my ex-gamedev contacts and they're hesitant to even use lambda or other C++11 features that have been around for a while now.

I think Mozilla's plan of driving things forward with Servo and using that as an large-scale example of the gains that can be made is a good approach.

Re: Rust and the Future of Systems Programming [video]

#7

Post by 0xAA55 »

z3t4 wrote: post #2

when you can run javascript on a pebble watch it blurs the boundaries ... Want to concat an number and string ? JavaScript wont complain.

Want to make a fast application on a pebble and with actual type checking? C and Ada won't complain or blur your lines... http://blog.adacore.com/make-with-ada-formal-proof-on-my-wri...

Re: Rust and the Future of Systems Programming [video]

#8

Post by gcp »

enqk wrote: post #4

Although I am not against improving the safety of languages we use for system programming, the model that Rust advocates are pushing of "preventing mistakes" as a way to make systems secure doesn't convince me. Mistakes (and security breaches) happen. A system should be written in such a way as mistakes are few, indeed, however it is essential to also efficiently protect our users' assets (data) first, assuming that…

Nothing prevents you from doing both approaches. I mean, while Mozilla is increasing Rust usage, they're also rolling out more extensive sandboxing.

Either of those by themselves are not a good enough solution though. Just trusting on Rust means you are vulnerable to Rust bugs or logic errors. Just trusting on sandboxing means you're hoping that your trusted code (written in C/C++) doesn't have any security bugs.

Re: Rust and the Future of Systems Programming [video]

#10

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

enqk wrote: post #4

Although I am not against improving the safety of languages we use for system programming, the model that Rust advocates are pushing of "preventing mistakes" as a way to make systems secure doesn't convince me. Mistakes (and security breaches) happen. A system should be written in such a way as mistakes are few, indeed, however it is essential to also efficiently protect our users' assets (data) first, assuming that…

#2 is up to the engineers making the product. #1 is why Rust exists: it eliminates whole classes of errors. No, it won't stop you from screwing up badly, but it just might stop the buffer overflow or race condition that would have helped a hacker steal your users' identities.
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