Why Rust for Low-Level Linux Programming?
groveronline.com
Why Rust for Low-Level Linux Programming?
1–10 of 231 posts
Re: Why Rust for Low-Level Linux Programming?
#2Rust reduces the amount of state I need to keep track of in my brain.
I doubt it, the mental overhead of doing "safe memory programming" in Rust is very high.
Edit: all good replies, want to clarify and forgot to mention that I was comparing to languages with a GC, since I'm seeing Rust being used for lots of stuff, in a general purpose programming language sense (like creating web frameworks for example). Also, for non-very-low-level stuff I guess this cognitive load will be less if/when they introduce an optional GC.
Re: Why Rust for Low-Level Linux Programming?
#3Rust reduces the amount of state I need to keep track of in my brain. I doubt it, the mental overhead of doing "safe memory programming" in Rust is very high. Edit: all good replies, want to clarify and forgot to mention that I was comparing to languages with a GC, since I'm seeing Rust being used for lots of stuff, in a general purpose programming language sense (like creating web frameworks for example). Also, for…
Can you give some examples?
Re: Why Rust for Low-Level Linux Programming?
#4As a long-time developer marketing person, I must say Rust is kicking ass, not just as a language but as a community. They are deeply strategic.
1. Clear audience target: They aren't going after C++ gurus or C magicians but people who are new to systems programming. From Klabnik to Katz to literally everyone in the community, they are consistent with this messaging.
2. As part of 1, they have invested a lot in teaching systems programming 101 (heap v. stack, etc.), i.e., stuff that you learn in the first course in systems programming in college, but many self-taught, higher-level programmers might not know. This is a great example of authentic content marketing based on a clear strategy working out.
3. Their community is very inclusive. My experience (as a marketing guy who barely remembers how to code) is that people are very helpful when you ask questions, submit a patch, etc. This has been the case for me not just with Rust itself but a couple of Rust projects that I've interacted with.
Re: Why Rust for Low-Level Linux Programming?
#5Rust reduces the amount of state I need to keep track of in my brain. I doubt it, the mental overhead of doing "safe memory programming" in Rust is very high. Edit: all good replies, want to clarify and forgot to mention that I was comparing to languages with a GC, since I'm seeing Rust being used for lots of stuff, in a general purpose programming language sense (like creating web frameworks for example). Also, for…
I don't remember the source.. but somewhere someone said that the borrow checker would get in the way until you've learned to a certain point, then after that point developers tend to think in terms of the borrow checker by default and it _works for them instead of against them_.
Besides, you're still going to be doing safe memory programming regardless of whatever language you use. (unless you're just saying "writing broken code is easier")
Re: Why Rust for Low-Level Linux Programming?
#6Rust reduces the amount of state I need to keep track of in my brain. I doubt it, the mental overhead of doing "safe memory programming" in Rust is very high. Edit: all good replies, want to clarify and forgot to mention that I was comparing to languages with a GC, since I'm seeing Rust being used for lots of stuff, in a general purpose programming language sense (like creating web frameworks for example). Also, for…
The mental overhead of doing "safe memory programming" is high already. The difference between Rust and, say, C, is that Rust forces you to do "safe memory programming". C lets you get away with unsafe memory programming.
Re: Why Rust for Low-Level Linux Programming?
#7Rust reduces the amount of state I need to keep track of in my brain. I doubt it, the mental overhead of doing "safe memory programming" in Rust is very high. Edit: all good replies, want to clarify and forgot to mention that I was comparing to languages with a GC, since I'm seeing Rust being used for lots of stuff, in a general purpose programming language sense (like creating web frameworks for example). Also, for…
Not my experience, fwiw. Rust does a great job of handling the mental overhead (am I allowed to mutate this? who owns this? what is the contract for that?) for me.
Re: Why Rust for Low-Level Linux Programming?
#8As a long-time developer marketing person, I must say Rust is kicking ass, not just as a language but as a community. They are deeply strategic. 1. Clear audience target: They aren't going after C++ gurus or C magicians but people who are new to systems programming. From Klabnik to Katz to literally everyone in the community, they are consistent with this messaging. 2. As part of 1, they have invested a lot in teachi…
> developer marketing person
What is that?
> They aren't going after C++ gurus or C magicians
Don't they have anything to gain from using Rust?
Re: Why Rust for Low-Level Linux Programming?
#9Rust reduces the amount of state I need to keep track of in my brain. I doubt it, the mental overhead of doing "safe memory programming" in Rust is very high. Edit: all good replies, want to clarify and forgot to mention that I was comparing to languages with a GC, since I'm seeing Rust being used for lots of stuff, in a general purpose programming language sense (like creating web frameworks for example). Also, for…
Designing memory-safe programs in C requires a programmer to reason about the same domains as doing so in Rust, but C doesn't double-check you to make sure you get everything right. With no guard rails, C is a lot more stressful.
Re: reducing mental state for a programmer, algebraic datatypes in general decrease the size of the state space of your program by making many illegal states unrepresentable. Without advanced forms of dependent types (maybe quotients), you can't make all illegal states unrepresentable, but you shrink the size of the state space hugely compared to writing everything as product types (as you would in C). A programmer has to reason about all the possible values their variables can take on, so it pays to minimize the cardinality of that set.
Re: Why Rust for Low-Level Linux Programming?
#10As a long-time developer marketing person, I must say Rust is kicking ass, not just as a language but as a community. They are deeply strategic. 1. Clear audience target: They aren't going after C++ gurus or C magicians but people who are new to systems programming. From Klabnik to Katz to literally everyone in the community, they are consistent with this messaging. 2. As part of 1, they have invested a lot in teachi…
> developer marketing person What is that? > They aren't going after C++ gurus or C magicians Don't they have anything to gain from using Rust?
Someone who markets to developers. The language and context should clear up the ambiguity that they don't mean they are merely a developer that works in marketing for something like, say selling potato chips