Python cryptography, Rust, and Gentoo [LWN.net]

Python cryptography, Rust, and Gentoo

Posted Apr 16, 2021 21:35 UTC (Fri) by wtarreau (subscriber, #51152)
In reply to: Python cryptography, Rust, and Gentoo by mathstuf
Parent article: Python cryptography, Rust, and Gentoo

> First, no language is going to show up with the platform support C has right out of the gate

You're confusing language and compiler. A language is platform-agnostic, it even works with paper and pen.

The problem here is that this so-called language knows a single compiler whose developers are not interested in porting to what they consider irrelevant platforms. It's their right, it's their project. What is sad is that jerks are blindly following this without consideration for their own users. With python cornering itself behind the sole list of platforms supported by rust and betraying its users, we're certain never to ever see python 4.

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Python cryptography, Rust, and Gentoo

Posted Apr 16, 2021 22:23 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

> What is sad is that jerks are blindly following this without consideration for their own users.

That seems to be a lot of projection to me. If my target audience is mainstream platforms or the project's goal is to implement something securely, what obligations do I have to those who happen to find it useful in their niche without considering to make sure it's within my project's goal or target audience? If someone comes up to me and says "hey, I got it working on the Nintendo Switch last year, your latest release breaks it", what am I to do? I'm not getting (or potentially bricking) a Switch to test it and I never claimed to support such a thing anyways. Patches that don't interfere with other things are fine, but if you're asking me to resurrect some pre-refactoring code just for your setup, sorry. Feel free to fork though.

I suspect this will be used for new drivers. Existing drivers will need a lot of "oomph" to warrant a rewrite. It seems to also have put more interest into the GCC frontend, so if/when that reaches the finish line, it'll be just as good for all the other Linux platforms.

> With python cornering itself behind the sole list of platforms supported by rust and betraying its users, we're certain never to ever see python 4.

Python has done no such thing. The maintainers of cryptography may arguably have done this (I make no claim to either argument on that front here), but they are not the maintainers of the CPython project. Any Python 4 was known to never be a thing because the maintainers recognized something of the trainwreck that the Python3 migration ended up being.