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Interview with Mitchell Hashimoto about Ghostty and Zig

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Re: Interview with Mitchell Hashimoto about Ghostty and Zig

#61

Post by throwaway27448 »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #50
spacechild1 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I remember watching HN and seeing every time there was something Rust related trending, there was ALWAYS a post made shortly after trying to hype Zig and this went on for like 4 years. You just got a tiny taste of what Rust enthusiasts have been doing to every C++ related submission here on HN for years.

Seriously. Yesterday there was a thread about a use-after-free bug in OpenBSD and despite BSD predating Rust by decades there were still people chiding the project for not using Rust (as though Rust would even protect you from all memory errors in a kernel project where you'd inevitably need to write unsafe Rust anyways!). Rust might be a fine language but it has the most toxic evangelist culture, bar none.

You have an awful low bar for what is considered chiding, damn

Then again, your very username implies an indulgence in viewing technology through the lens of fandoms which is... weird

Re: Interview with Mitchell Hashimoto about Ghostty and Zig

#62

Post by voidhorse »

skhameneh wrote: post #2

> I don’t like the Rust culture. There’s no better way to put it. This is just so weird to me, because I would say the same about Zig. I tried to get into Zig even chatted with Loris Cro when he was streaming. I was looking to explore what my Rust project could look like in Zig but there were features simply missing that I couldn't do without. The entire interaction was mostly about how bad Rust is and how I could ju…

Kind of tangential to the man Rust v. Zig culture debate but:

> I tried to get into Zig even chatted with Loris Cro when he was streaming. I was looking to explore what my Rust project could look like in Zig but there were features simply missing that I couldn't do without. The entire interaction was mostly about how bad Rust is and how I could just do something different in Zig (completely misunderstanding my ask, with little interest to explore my actual requirements).

Kind of reeks of unreasonable expectations to me. I don't think one should expect language designers to redesign a language or introduce new features that would likely be poor fits with the overall existing language philosophy (the design and usage philosophies behind Rust and Zig are practically opposite poles). Language stewards have a responsibility to everyone in their existing user base and they have a responsibility to evolve the language in a ways that's consistent with the expectations they already established (if they want to keep their users that is). Expecting the designers to rework the language to bolt on features from some other language just for your project is kind of absurd. I think Loris's supposed response is actually correct here and probably the best response he could give, without knowing more about precisely what the requests were, how willing you were to contribute work yourself, etc.

Re: Interview with Mitchell Hashimoto about Ghostty and Zig

#63

Post by busterarm »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #61
applfanboysbgon wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. Yesterday there was a thread about a use-after-free bug in OpenBSD and despite BSD predating Rust by decades there were still people chiding the project for not using Rust (as though Rust would even protect you from all memory errors in a kernel project where you'd inevitably need to write unsafe Rust anyways!). Rust might be a fine language but it has the most toxic evangelist culture, bar none.

You have an awful low bar for what is considered chiding, damn Then again, your very username implies an indulgence in viewing technology through the lens of fandoms which is... weird

I read the comment that they were referring to and it wasn't even constructive conversation in the thread.

It was basically a complete derail to backdoor in a conversation about why they think everything should be in Rust.

OpenBSD still uses CVS, C and Make because that's what works for them. They will continue to keep using C, Make and CVS but that enables them to be productive with the contributors that they have. Moving things to other languages will not increase their productivity. That's the biggest thing that the largely-fanatical Rust evangelists completely fail to understand.

Re: Interview with Mitchell Hashimoto about Ghostty and Zig

#64

Post by busterarm »

danudey wrote: post #29
khuey wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Back then I found the Rust community had interest and respect for Zig, so the discourse was very much one sided. In hindsight (and at risk of starting a flame war), it's easier to be magnanimous when you are winning/have won.

Is it a competition? I wonder if the Zig people feel as though it is, because I doubt the Rust people do. Rust's big tentpole is "no memory management bugs, everything must be provably safe", whereas Zig is very proud of "no memory management, you have full control but you have to exercise it". I don't feel as though these are competing for the same audience or mindshare. I've used Zig a big (while trying to contribu…

> I use Rust for things because it's so specific about what it wants from you and won't let you go off-script, and frankly I find that very beneficial for myself as someone coming from Python, Javascript, PHP, etc. where you just let things fall out of scope and it's not your problem anymore (usually).

I share your complaints about the tools you came to Rust from, but the philosophy of not letting you go off script is great until it doesn't work for you. A lot of the reason some of us use the more flexible languages is because we've been in situations where a language and its ecosystem either won't let you do something outright or not without significant pain. Often when everything is on fire and your customers are cancelling contracts. You can't afford to wait for the core team or community to come in and save you in these situations.

Having access to work around your problems is also the source of a lot of the pain you're talking about, but at least you get to stay in business to solve that problem tomorrow.

To a very large degree, a lot of the Rust evangelists that I encounter in the wild are either hobbyists, academics or paid open source contributors at large companies. Most of the discussions I've seen wrt Rust at companies with actual deliverables stop at "Rust? Absolutely not.". Except for a very narrow set of systems where you want the kind of guarantees that Rust provides as a primary feature. For more general situations, the tradeoffs often aren't worth it.

Re: Interview with Mitchell Hashimoto about Ghostty and Zig

#65

Post by giancarlostoro »

skhameneh wrote: post #2

> I don’t like the Rust culture. There’s no better way to put it. This is just so weird to me, because I would say the same about Zig. I tried to get into Zig even chatted with Loris Cro when he was streaming. I was looking to explore what my Rust project could look like in Zig but there were features simply missing that I couldn't do without. The entire interaction was mostly about how bad Rust is and how I could ju…

It feels like Zig is trying to be more like C, and Rust is trying to fill a C++ slot. I wish someone would have made something in between, or that the industry would have adopted D more, it certainly didn't help that their compiler was proprietary for so long, and then they rewrote their STD lib. D to me is one language I love fundamentally, but the ecosystem is nowhere near where it could be.

Re: Interview with Mitchell Hashimoto about Ghostty and Zig

#66

Post by juudjjsa »

tstack wrote: post #57
applfanboysbgon wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. Yesterday there was a thread about a use-after-free bug in OpenBSD and despite BSD predating Rust by decades there were still people chiding the project for not using Rust (as though Rust would even protect you from all memory errors in a kernel project where you'd inevitably need to write unsafe Rust anyways!). Rust might be a fine language but it has the most toxic evangelist culture, bar none.

> there were still people chiding the project for not using Rust Please provide a link to this comment. Someone asked an honest question and got reasonable responses that were informative. At no point did anyone chide the project for not using Rust. > Rust might be a fine language but it has the most toxic evangelist culture, bar none. Nah, people complaining about the supposed toxic community are noisier than the su…

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Re: Interview with Mitchell Hashimoto about Ghostty and Zig

#67

Post by juudjjsa »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #61
applfanboysbgon wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. Yesterday there was a thread about a use-after-free bug in OpenBSD and despite BSD predating Rust by decades there were still people chiding the project for not using Rust (as though Rust would even protect you from all memory errors in a kernel project where you'd inevitably need to write unsafe Rust anyways!). Rust might be a fine language but it has the most toxic evangelist culture, bar none.

You have an awful low bar for what is considered chiding, damn Then again, your very username implies an indulgence in viewing technology through the lens of fandoms which is... weird

[flagged]

Re: Interview with Mitchell Hashimoto about Ghostty and Zig

#68

Post by pstuart »

busterarm wrote: post #63
throwaway27448 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have an awful low bar for what is considered chiding, damn Then again, your very username implies an indulgence in viewing technology through the lens of fandoms which is... weird

I read the comment that they were referring to and it wasn't even constructive conversation in the thread. It was basically a complete derail to backdoor in a conversation about why they think everything should be in Rust. OpenBSD still uses CVS, C and Make because that's what works for them. They will continue to keep using C, Make and CVS but that enables them to be productive with the contributors that they have.…

It's easy to hate on LLM slop code but it seems that using it for analysis only could give a C codebase a much stronger security posture. Running fable and friends could give rust-like security with C portability and familiarity.

Re: Interview with Mitchell Hashimoto about Ghostty and Zig

#70

Post by juudjjsa »

insanitybit wrote: post #30
skhameneh wrote: post #2

> I don’t like the Rust culture. There’s no better way to put it. This is just so weird to me, because I would say the same about Zig. I tried to get into Zig even chatted with Loris Cro when he was streaming. I was looking to explore what my Rust project could look like in Zig but there were features simply missing that I couldn't do without. The entire interaction was mostly about how bad Rust is and how I could ju…

I write rust and barely interact with the community. I used to. I spoke at the first rustconf, even. I don't really care to engage with the rust community anymore (I cut myself off entirely from most online communities tbh). I might stay away from a particularly toxic community or one with wildly different values, but I don't really get why you wouldn't write Rust just because of how some people post about it. Odd tb…

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