System76 is using Rust now for automated testing and firmware flashing. I wrote these projects in rust, and I enjoy using it, can't say much about the other engineers.
Also, Redox OS is awesome :-)
Thanks ;-)
Ask HN: Will Rust ever become a mainstream systems programming language?
281–290 of 291 posts
Re: Ask HN: Will Rust ever become a mainstream systems programming language?
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Type restrictions aren't really a problem Did you ever seen AAA game source code? > You must not have played any Bethesda titles. I've played. Most bugs I've seen were logic errors, doesn't matter which language you would pick.
This is just outright denial. Bethesda titles are rife with segmentation fault galore. Even their most recent titles suffer the same terrible CTDs as all of their previous titles.
I am talking from my experience, I do not recall any segfaults in fallout 4 and elder scrolls oblivion.
Re: Ask HN: Will Rust ever become a mainstream systems programming language?
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think that language will end up looking a lot more like Rust than you think. I disagree, I think you could pick different way based on Cyclone coupling with some modern static analysis techniques, it would not have so many features as Rust have but it would be less invasive and more "C/D'ish".
> and more "C/D'ish" This I think is where a lot of the pushback comes from. People say want a new C replacement, but some portion of them look at what that actually means, and find they actually want C with a new feature or two because actually learning something new, even new looking, is work. Rust is not C or C++ with a few new features, it's a new language, and some people really want that, and some people are pu…
I agree with you that people have a preference. For me it's about enjoying what I am doing, I would rather change my job than write Rust every day, not because it's a bad language or I don't know how to use it but because this style of writing the code is not clean and elegant for me. I would rather write D, just my personal taste.
Re: Ask HN: Will Rust ever become a mainstream systems programming language?
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is just outright denial. Bethesda titles are rife with segmentation fault galore. Even their most recent titles suffer the same terrible CTDs as all of their previous titles.
I am talking from my experience, I do not recall any segfaults in fallout 4 and elder scrolls oblivion.
What? Cannot talk about Fallout 4 but Oblivion (and Skyrim and Morrowind) was full of CTDs bugs. Some of them are fixed in EngineBugFixes(http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/47085/?) or the Oblivion Script Extender (as the SetLevel bug). Don't you know that the background SpeedTree laoder thread has a potential for a data race that can cause random CTDs in the Wilderness? Or the Corrupted SpwanPoints bug? Or calling GetAlarmed on a NPC without AI package. Or the internal heap manager with it's race conditions?
Re: Ask HN: Will Rust ever become a mainstream systems programming language?
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's already a few games written in Rust on Steam's Greenlight program. SHAR was even greenlit. Stating that it isn't clear that it would work out is basically stating that you are choosing to ignore that it has and is being done successfully. > stop making grand, unfounded assertions about what Rust is good for You are basically stating that everything that I have done in Rust is a lie. I will not stand for that.
There are vast gulfs between Steam Greenlight candidates and AAA. Nobody here, least of all me, has claimed that Rust cannot be used for any game at all, nor have they disputed your own experiences. Grow up.
You clearly don't read what you write.
> I would love to use Rust in games (I currently work in games) but it's not clear that it would work out.
There are many contradictions in your posts on here.
Re: Ask HN: Will Rust ever become a mainstream systems programming language?
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
>* Games can't get by with just malloc-style memory management- and while it's easy to mess up, C and C++ handle arenas/pools/etc with far less friction than Rust, where you'd want to package up every little pointer thing behind a safe API. That's a good tradeoff here because the bugs are mostly harmless and easy to track given the constrained environment. I don't see why this isn't fixable? It's just a lack of libra…
> memory management > It's just a lack of library support AFAICT. Libraries could help, but game often have a lot of one-off memory stuff too that you can't put in a library and you can't do in safe Rust. Maybe there are some more creative solutions that nobody's had to come up with yet because C makes it so frictionless. > error handling in Go is at least as bad The thing is that style lets you ignore errors in case…
> The thing is that style lets you ignore errors in cases where the error isn't gonna happen. That's usually bad, but in games it's often fine because you control everything. The equivalent in Rust requires an `unwrap` of some kind which introduces performance and syntactic overhead.
The contradiction in your logic here is that if you don't want to handle errors, then don't design your functions to return errors. In addition, many of the larger time game studios write and use their own standard library, so they could devise an efficient 'game stdlib' where they don't have to pay such costs.
Re: Ask HN: Will Rust ever become a mainstream systems programming language?
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are vast gulfs between Steam Greenlight candidates and AAA. Nobody here, least of all me, has claimed that Rust cannot be used for any game at all, nor have they disputed your own experiences. Grow up.
You clearly don't read what you write. > I would love to use Rust in games (I currently work in games) but it's not clear that it would work out. There are many contradictions in your posts on here.
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Re: Ask HN: Will Rust ever become a mainstream systems programming language?
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like... Cobol... 'cause all those reasons are vanishing and will vanish.
Those who need Cobol use them(Core banking applications). Rust is better than C++, but it's not extremely better than C++.
Extremely safer seems to me to be extremely better, these days.
Re: Ask HN: Will Rust ever become a mainstream systems programming language?
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd recommend taking a look at Common Lisps condition system, which does exceptions right. The most important feature is that catch blocks are executed before the stack is unwond, providing the ability for a handler to signal back to the context where the error occurred how it should be handled. It's sad that no other languages implement this and instead simply decide that exceptions are bad.
Fun trivia: Rust had conditions! Nobody used them, so they were removed.
That sounds short-sighted to me. Even in Lisp restarts (i.e. the feature that allows a handler to communicate back to the point where the exception was thrown) aren't used that often, but when they are, they are incredibly valuable.
Re: Ask HN: Will Rust ever become a mainstream systems programming language?
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fun trivia: Rust had conditions! Nobody used them, so they were removed.
That sounds short-sighted to me. Even in Lisp restarts (i.e. the feature that allows a handler to communicate back to the point where the exception was thrown) aren't used that often, but when they are, they are incredibly valuable.
In TXR Lisp, a continuable exception occurs every time you see a warning about something in the code, like an unbound variable. It is intercepted higher up and automatically continued.
The code expander has an entry point which allows the caller to be informed about what variables and functions are free in a block of code. The implementation of this entry point works by intercepting warning exceptions about unbound symbols, and accumulating them in in lists, which are then returned to the caller.
This is a useful thing which reduces the need for users to write their own code walker in certain kinds of advanced macros.