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Why Rust for Low-Level Linux Programming?

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Re: Why Rust for Low-Level Linux Programming?

#81

Post by monocasa »

epoch1970 wrote: post #52
steveklabnik wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will certainly concede the second, but we put a _lot_ of effort into ensuring that Rust is stable. Things have changed a lot since the pre-1.0 days.

> Things have changed a lot since the pre-1.0 days. The instability of the pre-1.0 days left a very bad impression on many people who tried Rust then. They came to know Rust as a compile-today-but-not-tomorrow kind of language. What, if anything, is being done to try to inform these people that the situation has changed, to encourage them to try Rust again? What's being done to restore Rust's reputation?

> What, if anything, is being done to try to inform these people that the situation has changed, to encourage them to try Rust again?

Releasing something called 1.0.

Re: Why Rust for Low-Level Linux Programming?

#82

Post by oblio »

pcwalton wrote: post #74
epoch1970 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They aren't going after C++ gurus or C magicians but people who are new to systems programming. If this actually is their strategy, is it being done voluntarily or out of necessity? I ask, because I've witnessed enough scepticism about Rust from C and C++ programmers. Rightly or wrongly, there are enough of them who don't appear to be receptive to Rust, and likely never will be. So the Rust community may never be a…

> I ask, because I've witnessed enough scepticism about Rust from C and C++ programmers. I don't think there's a single language on the planet that hasn't had skeptics, especially at the beginning. Remember how skeptical everyone was of Python at first due to its significant whitespace? Programmers are very tribal about their tools.

> Remember how skeptical everyone was of Python at first due to its significant whitespace?

A large group of programmers still hates Python for this reason, to this day. They've just moved on and are probably completely ignoring Python these days.

Re: Why Rust for Low-Level Linux Programming?

#83

Post by stirner »

xvilka wrote: post #32

Well, Rust is awesome, but there is a place for C too. I just don't understand lack of the life and no improvements in C for ages. Better typing system (for example _Generic doesn't know uint8_t, etc types - they are just typedefs), 'pure' keyword for functions without side effects, tuples support, deprecate a lot of the things and so on.

> I just don't understand lack of the life and no improvements in C for ages.

Well, MSVC still hasn't even fully implemented C99. One of the big draws of C, as I see it, is its wide support on many operating systems and architectures. If you're going to abandon that by using new C features, you might as well use a language with less cruft.

Re: Why Rust for Low-Level Linux Programming?

#84

Post by DonaldFisk »

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #11

Is there any reason why embedded software for autonomous vehicles is still being written in C/C++? This last week I was talking to a friend at a company that makes a small autonomous vehicle. During testing their prototype suddenly went off in a straight line. They had to pull a safety to halt the vehicle or it would have gone straight forever into the Pacific Ocean. Turns out there was an unsafe access to a variable…

There are standards (MISRA C) which are supposed to stop things like that happening. Perhaps they weren't being followed?

There are other safe languages they could have used which have a longer track record than Rust, e.g. Ada. It's used in avionics. Why shouldn't it being used here?

Re: Why Rust for Low-Level Linux Programming?

#85

Post by ArkyBeagle »

ktamura wrote: post #4

As 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…

Magicians, schmagicians. I say that as part of (possibly) that group. We've just learned to "cover our father's nakedness" so to speak.

I just hope Rust practitioners can do a few things where they have to use 'C' ( properly ), much as I think assembly is a good thing for 'C' programmers to do.

I hope the relationship between 'C' and Rust is collegial - ideally, it would approach being the same people over time because legacy code. Nothing divides like language, and flexibility is a great way to harden your skillset.

Re: Why Rust for Low-Level Linux Programming?

#86

Post by ArkyBeagle »

oblio wrote: post #79
tiglionabbit wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The magicians.

They might have something to gain, but they're probably deeply invested in the tech already. People are very hard to dislodge from such positions, unless the new positions have overwhelming benefits such as: a new environment does not support the old tools/programming language; a radical paradigm shift has happened that risks to make completely obsolete their previous knowledge, etc. Rust is more of an incremental im…

I still use 'C'. I do this primarily because the legacy code base is staggeringly large. I'd jump on a gig doing Rust in a heartbeat, all other factors to the good.

Re: Why Rust for Low-Level Linux Programming?

#87

Post by kbenson »

bitwize wrote: post #80
TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #11

Is there any reason why embedded software for autonomous vehicles is still being written in C/C++? This last week I was talking to a friend at a company that makes a small autonomous vehicle. During testing their prototype suddenly went off in a straight line. They had to pull a safety to halt the vehicle or it would have gone straight forever into the Pacific Ocean. Turns out there was an unsafe access to a variable…

No, there's no reason, as it could have been written in Ada and gotten many of the same safety guarantees as Rust provides.

Given Ada's history in safety critical systems (avionics), it's actually somewhat surprising more didn't use Ada. They could have just adopted the military standard (which is fairly stringent, as I understand it). The military is pretty adverse to losing billion dollar pieces of equipment, so they probably take quite a few precautions.

Re: Why Rust for Low-Level Linux Programming?

#88

Post by jdeeny »

pjmlp wrote: post #20
Bromskloss wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

A developer evangelist. Think someone doing a talk about new Java 9 features at a Java conference. C++ gurus and C magicians already have invested too deep into their languages to throw everything away and start from zero. For example I love Rust and play occasionally with it, but for the time being C++ is my native language on the job when I need to use a native language outside .NET or JVM. I know it since the C++A…

As a C magician, rust provides too many clear improvements over C to ignore it. I certainly don't feel like I am 'throwing everything away and starting from zero,' as much of my C (and other language) knowledge transfers over to rust.

I'm not a C++ guru, but I think modern C++ is powerful enough that it doesn't feel lacking in features compared to rust, like C does. There is less of a draw for seasoned C++ programmers.

Rust seems to be gaining a lot of momentum and I am becoming more and more confident that it will be regarded as a major language for embedded and general systems programming and possibly even a successor to C.

Re: Why Rust for Low-Level Linux Programming?

#89

Post by M2Ys4U »

pcwalton wrote: post #70
epoch1970 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Things have changed a lot since the pre-1.0 days. The instability of the pre-1.0 days left a very bad impression on many people who tried Rust then. They came to know Rust as a compile-today-but-not-tomorrow kind of language. What, if anything, is being done to try to inform these people that the situation has changed, to encourage them to try Rust again? What's being done to restore Rust's reputation?

> What, if anything, is being done to try to inform these people that the situation has changed, to encourage them to try Rust again? What's being done to restore Rust's reputation? A lot? For example, "Stability as a Deliverable", which was here on HN: http://blog.rust-lang.org/2014/10/30/Stability.html I'm not sorry for opening up the language during its early development. The alternatives would have been to produc…

There are still plenty of crates that say "you need to be using nightly!".

That put me off starting to develop something in Rust right now, unfortunately, because I'm a huge fan of the way Rust was developed and its core ideals.

Re: Why Rust for Low-Level Linux Programming?

#90

Post by catnaroek »

kylebgorman wrote: post #36
PeCaN wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Compiler-enforced ownership and lifetimes _dramatically_ reduces the mental overhead of memory management compared to C. It also saves time from having to run things under Valgrind and ASAN just to make sure I didn't mess up. The extra time spent getting Rust code to compile is considerably shorter than the time required to debug something Valgrind found.

I feel the same way about C++ smart pointers, which are remarkably simple to use and understand.

While definitely an improvement over raw pointers, ultimately C++'s smart pointers still fall short in several ways: they can be null, there's no lifetime checking for references (so you can still use after free), there's no object freezing (so you can still have data races), etc.
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