Rust lacunae [LWN.net]

Rust lacunae

Posted Jun 11, 2021 2:26 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
In reply to: Rust lacunae by ncm
Parent article: Rewriting the GNU Coreutils in Rust

> ("Rewrite It in Rust" has lately been repudiated as official policy of Rust advocacy, for reasons, but uutils seems to have missed the memo.)

Or they found the Rust benefits worth it regardless of advocacy. Your scorn is unwarranted.

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Rust lacunae

Posted Jun 11, 2021 3:05 UTC (Fri) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (6 responses)

If you read scorn, you read wrong.

Rust is manifestly a better language than C for any use where it works at all. But it is not the only, and often enough not the wisest choice. Everyone chooses for their own reasons, and wisdom may come too late, but late is better than never.

Rust lacunae

Posted Jun 11, 2021 4:47 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

> If you read scorn, you read wrong.

I wasn't the only who read it that way. Couple of examples:

"Complacency around bugs the Rust compiler permits is encouraged by neglect as part of the Holy Mission to drive Rust into universal enterprise use"

Sounds like a conspiracy with no evidence cited.

"No Holy Mission drives such activity"

Sounds scornful to me. If you didn't intend to be read that way, you should rephrase these.

Rust lacunae

Posted Jun 11, 2021 10:13 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (4 responses)

> But it is not the only, and often enough not the wisest choice.

Sadly today they are precisely one language suitable for writing safe low-level code. Well… one and half, essentially: Rust and “GCC's C with set of flags Linus insisted on being added to GCC”. C++ is flat-out unsuitable.

And as you readily admit Rust is the best of these.

Rust lacunae

Posted Jun 12, 2021 13:50 UTC (Sat) by BirAdam (guest, #132170) [Link] (1 responses)

One?

Did everyone suddenly forget about Ada and it’s sinking Spark? These two have been in use in mission critical work for decades.

Ada for the win

Posted Jun 21, 2021 22:04 UTC (Mon) by rc_rocks (guest, #152877) [Link]

Indeed. I think that Ada would be an excellent choice for a safer more reliable set of utilities.

Rust lacunae

Posted Jun 12, 2021 22:52 UTC (Sat) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (1 responses)

You are the first simultaneous Rust promoter and C apologist I have encountered. You might be all alone in the world.

Rust lacunae

Posted Jun 12, 2021 23:22 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

Why? C is a de-facto systems language (duh), and Rust is the only modern-ish alternative. I believe that C++ can be used as well, but it has way too many drawbacks to justify rewrite of low-level systems in C++.