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Should you Rust in embedded yet?

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Re: Should you Rust in embedded yet?

#11

Post by pknopf »

_sh wrote: post #9

Embedded developer here, ARM Cortex-M4 microcontrollers. I've been keeping an eye on Rust for the embedded space and although there has been a lot of movement in that area--particularly in the last couple of months--I'm not sure the value proposition fits the microcontroller market, where of course C is king. While Rust has much to offer as a programming paradigm in general, the main value is in the borrow-checker (t…

Why is C king? Why not C++? The difference is just a compiler, and you can use C in C++.

Re: Should you Rust in embedded yet?

#12

Post by bb88 »

keithnz wrote: post #8

I'm completely in this boat at the moment. We are doing a hardware refresh of our embedded platform and I'm looking at the feasability of using Rust. I'm at the point where I think it is close to being viable, but seems very young. Most likely we will go with a platform that can support rust, and write the low level modules with the intent of using rust, but not use Rust just yet, but do a side project to asseses the…

Keep in mind that at some level, something has to be unsafe, unless you've got hard mathematical proofs that your code works as compiled.

Re: Should you Rust in embedded yet?

#13

Post by dingo_bat »

pknopf wrote: post #11
_sh wrote: post #9

Embedded developer here, ARM Cortex-M4 microcontrollers. I've been keeping an eye on Rust for the embedded space and although there has been a lot of movement in that area--particularly in the last couple of months--I'm not sure the value proposition fits the microcontroller market, where of course C is king. While Rust has much to offer as a programming paradigm in general, the main value is in the borrow-checker (t…

Why is C king? Why not C++? The difference is just a compiler, and you can use C in C++.

I don't know why. But it's true.

Re: Should you Rust in embedded yet?

#14

Post by bb88 »

pknopf wrote: post #11
_sh wrote: post #9

Embedded developer here, ARM Cortex-M4 microcontrollers. I've been keeping an eye on Rust for the embedded space and although there has been a lot of movement in that area--particularly in the last couple of months--I'm not sure the value proposition fits the microcontroller market, where of course C is king. While Rust has much to offer as a programming paradigm in general, the main value is in the borrow-checker (t…

Why is C king? Why not C++? The difference is just a compiler, and you can use C in C++.

Here's a rant by Linus Torvalds. Take the politics and snark with a grain of salt. His technical arguments, however, are spot on.

http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/linus

Re: Should you Rust in embedded yet?

#15

Post by Analemma_ »

pknopf wrote: post #11
_sh wrote: post #9

Embedded developer here, ARM Cortex-M4 microcontrollers. I've been keeping an eye on Rust for the embedded space and although there has been a lot of movement in that area--particularly in the last couple of months--I'm not sure the value proposition fits the microcontroller market, where of course C is king. While Rust has much to offer as a programming paradigm in general, the main value is in the borrow-checker (t…

Why is C king? Why not C++? The difference is just a compiler, and you can use C in C++.

I’m not an embedded developer, but my guess is that if they’re not even using dynamic memory, I doubt they need or want anything that C++ has to offer.

Re: Should you Rust in embedded yet?

#16

Post by Inityx »

pknopf wrote: post #11
_sh wrote: post #9

Embedded developer here, ARM Cortex-M4 microcontrollers. I've been keeping an eye on Rust for the embedded space and although there has been a lot of movement in that area--particularly in the last couple of months--I'm not sure the value proposition fits the microcontroller market, where of course C is king. While Rust has much to offer as a programming paradigm in general, the main value is in the borrow-checker (t…

Why is C king? Why not C++? The difference is just a compiler, and you can use C in C++.

C is king because the industry is currently dominated by people who have been doing this since before C++ was a thing.

Additionally, most of these people are primarily electrical engineers, and don't have as strong of a background in computer science. They've been using C for decades and it does everything they want, why would they take the time to learn the boundless complexity introduced by a language that offers them (what they perceive to be) very little?

Talking to long-time C programmers about C++ is actually surprisingly difficult: https://youtu.be/D7Sd8A6_fYU

Re: Should you Rust in embedded yet?

#17

Post by pknopf »

Inityx wrote: post #16
pknopf wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is C king? Why not C++? The difference is just a compiler, and you can use C in C++.

C is king because the industry is currently dominated by people who have been doing this since before C++ was a thing. Additionally, most of these people are primarily electrical engineers, and don't have as strong of a background in computer science. They've been using C for decades and it does everything they want, why would they take the time to learn the boundless complexity introduced by a language that offers t…

Let me ask it this way:

I'm a higher level programmer. Later in my career I happen to get down to microcontrollers, what would stop me from using C++?

Re: Should you Rust in embedded yet?

#18

Post by bb88 »

Inityx wrote: post #16
pknopf wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is C king? Why not C++? The difference is just a compiler, and you can use C in C++.

C is king because the industry is currently dominated by people who have been doing this since before C++ was a thing. Additionally, most of these people are primarily electrical engineers, and don't have as strong of a background in computer science. They've been using C for decades and it does everything they want, why would they take the time to learn the boundless complexity introduced by a language that offers t…

> C is king because the industry is currently dominated by people who have been doing this since before C++ was a thing.

No. If C++ were a great language those C coders would have moved over in an instant. One of the advantages of looking at C code is that you can actually figure out in your head what the assembly will look like.

Re: Should you Rust in embedded yet?

#19

Post by Inityx »

bb88 wrote: post #14
pknopf wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is C king? Why not C++? The difference is just a compiler, and you can use C in C++.

Here's a rant by Linus Torvalds. Take the politics and snark with a grain of salt. His technical arguments, however, are spot on. http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/linus

I'm not sure how much water his argument here holds anymore. C++ has changed A LOT since 2007; idiomatic C++11 is an extremely different language from C++03, and C++20 is almost unrecognizable to an early C++ developer.

Re: Should you Rust in embedded yet?

#20

Post by pknopf »

Analemma_ wrote: post #15
pknopf wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is C king? Why not C++? The difference is just a compiler, and you can use C in C++.

I’m not an embedded developer, but my guess is that if they’re not even using dynamic memory, I doubt they need or want anything that C++ has to offer.

I can see people arguing for object oriented over procedural.

As I type that, I realize I've recently learned to love Go, so maybe it is my bias.

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