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What it feels like when Rust saves your bacon

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Re: What it feels like when Rust saves your bacon

#121

Post by capitainenemo »

lmm wrote: post #70
shuger wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in probably what is considered one of the least "safe" languages: C++ The issues that Rust is supposed to help with are simply not what we spent time on. All the bugs reported are pretty much exclusively root caused to "business logic". From recent time I can recall only one that was a programming mistake and not architecture/business logic related. It was a missing break in a switch that already had some fall…

> The issues that Rust is supposed to help with are simply not what we spent time on. All the bugs reported are pretty much exclusively root caused to "business logic". Everyone claims this, probably because business logic bugs are more memorable. But I've never seen it match the real statistics. According to the best published data, null alone is something like 30-70% of bugs, you just don't remember them because th…

I wonder if passing NaN is considered "business logic" Thinking of this interesting exchange long ago by an experienced c++ dev

https://old.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/78bowa/hey_this_is_ky...

Re: What it feels like when Rust saves your bacon

#122

Post by strictfp »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #78
strictfp wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's true. In a sense, c++ requires good code structuring. That's also part of why I enjoy returning to c++, the people involved know how to structure code and create clean architecture. That said, sometimes c++ does get in the way. Creating trees or graphs can be cumbersome, and IMO it's very biased towards virtual methods to solve polymorphism. Extending lifetimes by pooling or similar is also quite common,…

> very biased towards virtual methods This is a function of the type of software you write. There are many large C++ code bases that rely on various types of static polymorphism almost exclusively, rarely having a use case for virtual methods or dynamic polymorphism. There is a similar story with inheritance versus composition; some types of code bases naturally gravitate toward one or the other. The nice thing about…

I don't agree. The support for static polymorphism is in it's infancy at best.

Re: What it feels like when Rust saves your bacon

#123

Post by Yoric »

jesse__ wrote: post #95
jackmott42 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see many C++ programmers say stuff like this, and maybe it is the case that studios exist which can do C++ without mistakes related to memory management or sigils and so on, but I also observe that: 1. High quality teams like the Linux kernel team and PostgreSQL, do periodically have serious security bugs that are things Rust would have caught. 2. I see sometimes C++ instructors making the same claims you do and th…

I'd venture that the development slowdown from using rust is closer to 50% than 5%. Even just compile times probably slow down that much, not to mention you have to write (sometimes) as much as 10x code to express yourself. The specific exercise I have in mind is a lockless thread queue. < 20 lines in C .. ~200 lines in Rust.

My anecdotal experience is the opposite.

I write code much faster in Rust than in C++. Part of it is thanks to the type system – fewer opportunities for dev errors means that I can produce code that is more concise, spends less time handling runtime errors because I can have static guarantees that they have already been handled somewhere, etc. Part of it is #[derive(...)], great documentation, Cargo and other QoL components of Rust.

Re: What it feels like when Rust saves your bacon

#124

Post by masklinn »

kingaillas wrote: post #99
MauranKilom wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name what new syntax you abhor? I mean, other than [] (){}() being a valid C++ expression [0], C++ hasn't even made any notable sygil-related syntax changes recently. Sure, some keywords were added (auto, constexpr, co_yield...) but I don't see how that leads to "ugly" syntax. [0]: That's a lambda capturing no state, having no template parameters, taking no arguments, with an empty body, finally being called…

Anything with templates, type traits, especially when nested. (The kind of spew you get on an compilation error). Even template struct foo () )>> : std::true_type { }; looks terrible and that's just basic.

I still wish Rust had a way to express decltype tho. `impl Trait` doesn't always work, and when it doesn't it's quite frustrating.

Re: What it feels like when Rust saves your bacon

#126

Post by zh3 »

shuger wrote: post #8

This article is super overcomplicated. All it had to say was that rust tells you when you keep reference to on stack variable after it goes out of scope. Context provided adds nothing. I must say - as someone who doesn't use rust - I haven't had this type of issue in years, and when I did it wasn't hard to debug. You get corrupted data, set data breakpoint and in the provided example you will see it being modified by…

As someone considering learning Rust, the article put me off fast with the long preamble to even explaining what the issue was. I really hope it's not that complicated, but even your rebuttal fills me with fear - "corrupted data [......] being modified by unrelated operations on stack". How would you explain that to put a C programmers mind at ease?

Re: What it feels like when Rust saves your bacon

#127

Post by estebank »

masklinn wrote: post #124
kingaillas wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything with templates, type traits, especially when nested. (The kind of spew you get on an compilation error). Even template struct foo () )>> : std::true_type { }; looks terrible and that's just basic.

I still wish Rust had a way to express decltype tho. `impl Trait` doesn't always work, and when it doesn't it's quite frustrating.

What limitation do you encounter with `impl Trait`? They might be removed by `type Alias = impl Trait;` soon.

https://rust-lang.github.io/rfcs/2515-type_alias_impl_trait....

Re: What it feels like when Rust saves your bacon

#128

Post by kelnos »

kjksf wrote: post #18
proto_lambda wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the tale of someone rewriting a very complex and fiddly software from scratch, having it work great in production, and then using the ecosystem's great tooling to easily find and eliminate even more bugs than what the language already protected them from?

The thing they rewrote also worked great in production. And fuzzing originated in C / C++ tools and is available for them as well, probably more diverse and mature than what is available in Rust. The point you did ignore was: Rust is being sold as magically making software safe and people selling that completely ignore the fact that logical bugs are also a thing. Which Rust evangelists find difficult to acknowledge b…

> Rust is being sold as magically making software safe and people selling that completely ignore the fact that logical bugs are also a thing.

I don't think that's true. Sure, there are zealots who oversell things, but reasonable people (including those who are actual leaders in the Rust community) are realistic about the classes of bugs that Rust eliminates, as well as those Rust doesn't help with.

Re: What it feels like when Rust saves your bacon

#129

Post by ArrayBoundCheck »

shuger wrote: post #8

This article is super overcomplicated. All it had to say was that rust tells you when you keep reference to on stack variable after it goes out of scope. Context provided adds nothing. I must say - as someone who doesn't use rust - I haven't had this type of issue in years, and when I did it wasn't hard to debug. You get corrupted data, set data breakpoint and in the provided example you will see it being modified by…

It's unfortunate how many upvotes this got from the title

Re: What it feels like when Rust saves your bacon

#130

Post by kelnos »

Thiez wrote: post #112
sitkack wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ohh, I got one. Rust is less secure than C++ because it causes people to be overconfident in its security properties. The sharp edges of C++ are a feature that cause people to focus on correctness, not just get it for free.

You jest, but that used to be an argument against making seatbelts mandatory in cars. I suppose people would drive even more safely if there was a sharp metal spike sticking out of the center of the steering wheel.

Hell, this is a current argument some people have against wearing bicycle and motorcycle helmets.
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