Java/C# vs Rust
Java/C# vs Rust
Posted Aug 16, 2024 13:29 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252)In reply to: Java/C# vs Rust by joib
Parent article: Standards for use of unsafe Rust in the kernel
> Well, Java was two decades before Rust,
Yes
> and allowed developers to write code that was safer from many common errors that plague C and C++ codebases.No. Developers had plenty of options before Java and they still have plenty of options for these apps.
> Yes, Java enterprise culture created a lot of ridiculousness (AbstractIntegerAdditionFactoryBean memes etc.), but still, had all the zillions of lines written in Java/C# instead been written in C/C++, the CVE database might have imploded into a black hole.But they wouldn't have been written in C/C++! There were plenty of options for these enterprise apps: from FoxPro to Visual Basic (including VBA), and more specialized ones like Pick/BASIC (that Wol raves so much all the time) or ABAP, etc.
Java and C# were sold as replacements for C/C++ (remember CorelOffice for Java and other such silly things?), it completely and utterly failed at that (and destroyed lots of products in the process, from JavaStation to Windows Phone) and then was used to program apps which were already mostly programmed in memory safe languages.
Ironic, isn't it?
Technically Java and C# replaced one memory-unsafe and quite popular language: Pascal. But Delphi wasn't the language that majority of apps were written in even if it was quite popular in some circles. And I'm not entirely sure that achievement is worth the destruction that failed attempt to replace C/C++ with Java/C# caused.
> Would it have been better if Rust had been available in 1995? Yes, but it wasn't. Well, Haskell was around then and roughly as popular as today? ;)Haskell was never an answer, but technique that, ultimately, made Rust into what it us was, apparently, was known back in 1987.
Sure, it needed a refinement, but said refinement haven't happened precisely because the whole wold was thinking that they found the perfect solution to the safety problem (in a form of tracing GC) and tried to “plug the remaining holes in that solution”.
Only it was never a solution. Just like airbags and seat belts are not a solution for the reckless driving but automatic cameras that detect rules violation do wonder to reduce it, similarly tracing GC is not a solution for the safety issues (even if can achieve memory safety).