“Rust is safe” is not some kind of absolute guarantee of code safety

Post by scoutt » Mon, Oct 10, 2022, 12:31 PM UTC

Jweb_Guru wrote: post #539

scoutt wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's FUD. And not only that. The fear of constantly being attacked by an external entity is also paranoic.

Unfortunately, whether you personally care about this sort of thing isn't good enough anymore. Owned Linux boxes on IoT devices are now being marshaled into massive botnets used to perform denial of service attacks, while other vulnerabilities are exploited to enable ransomware. You having negligent security on your own unpatched box because you don't personally feel like it's a good tradeoff has many negative extern…

> why you're so angry about it

Am I?

You suppose a lot of things about me from literaly a bunch of words.

"A 'tiny probability of memory corruption' can easily become a CVE" is still FUD, because is simply not true in most cases. The words "tiny" and "easily" show the bias here.

The rest of the conversation seems a symptom of Hypervigilance: Fixation on potential threats (dangerous people, animals, or situations).

Fortunately, the decision isn't up to you either.

Post by phendrenad2 » Thu, Oct 13, 2022, 5:55 AM UTC

dureuill wrote: post #540

phendrenad2 wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust isn't seatbelts, Rust is a tank. It's hard to steer, you need 4 people to operate it, but it's safe from bullets. It can also sink in quicksand or mud very easily. Rust advocates ignore the usability problems and say "Drive a tank everywhere, it's bullet-safe". Meanwhile the average programmer will get lost in the complexity of Rust and invent shortcuts like using unsafe {} in exactly the wrong place.

This runs contrary to my experience. 1. Coming from C++, my productivity is x2-x3 in Rust, making Rust a middle point between C++ and Python (about x8 productivity). What's more, if we factor maintenance time in, the lower costs of maintenance of Rust code makes the multiplier tend to x10, which is equal or better than Python (whose maintenance costs are important). 2. I have a colleague coming from Python (so a very…

You misunderstood my argument. My argument is that if forced to use Rust (given, say, a tectonic shift in the coding world where Rust becomes dominant - something many people are clamoring for), most average developers would have a difficult time writing secure code, because they'll have to keep a higher level of complexity in mind. Productivity is irrelevant. This is the classic trap of not being able to measure thing ABC, so you measure thing XYZ and assume that it's the same.

TL;DR: Let's see what happens when average C programers are forced to use Rust. Will their code be more secure? I see no convincing arguments one way or the other. Only measuring XYZs.

Re: “Rust is safe” is not some kind of absolute guarantee of code safety

Re: “Rust is safe” is not some kind of absolute guarantee of code safety