Huang: Rust: A Critical Retrospective

Posted Jun 2, 2022 22:54 UTC (Thu) by mrugiero (guest, #153040)
In reply to: Huang: Rust: A Critical Retrospective by khim
Parent article: Huang: Rust: A Critical Retrospective

> I suspect that the only reason people are not doing it more is the fact that buggy, low-quality, barely working code was the historical norm and even code used for critical systems is often delivered with “no liabilities” licenses.
>
> Situation is slowly changes, but we couldn't just, suddenly, add stiff penalties to the code: existing codebases would instantly become useless and we don't have anything better to replace them right now.

I think it will continue to be the norm because extra work is extra time to market. While I do not support cutting corners that way (not everywhere anyway), there's simply very strong commercial incentives to ship sorta-kinda-works code fast rather than correct code a few months later. It's more or less while software keeps getting more and more inefficient.

Huang: Rust: A Critical Retrospective

Posted Jun 10, 2022 20:36 UTC (Fri) by matu3ba (guest, #143502) [Link]

> Situation is slowly changes, but we couldn't just, suddenly, add stiff penalties to the code: existing codebases would instantly become useless and we don't have anything better to replace them right now.

If you look at the code that is verified, then there are 2 approaches: 1. automatize a subclass of problems (Wuffs, Rust) or 2. formally verify the code (codegen or only logic with different performance and safety requirements etc).

> I think it will continue to be the norm because extra work is extra time to market.

Not really. Fundamental libraries make a small share of costs, but can play a huge risk on getting things wrong.
Though for Rust, it is more of a tradeoff than Wuffs.

That said, product analysis has initial costs, maintenance costs and risks vs gains. The product you describe sound like low trusted brand things (throw-away products or component can be restarted on failure with low chance + cost on data loss).