Downsides of C language culture?

Posted Aug 26, 2024 12:19 UTC (Mon) by mb (subscriber, #50428)
In reply to: Downsides of C language culture? by pizza
Parent article: A review of file descriptor memory safety in the kernel

The kernel always required a special C compiler with special non-standard features (gcc).
The standard compliant C compiler llvm was not able to compile the kernel until it also gained additional features (and the kernel was modified as well).

And now Rust also needs to get some more special features for Linux.
So what?

I don't see how on earth this could be *any* hint as to whether Rust is "clearly [..] not yet a universal replacement for C" or not.

And there are other operating systems implemented in Rust.

Downsides of C language culture?

Posted Aug 26, 2024 12:42 UTC (Mon) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (3 responses)

> And there are other operating systems implemented in Rust.

Good for them. But they don't have the same requirements/features as Linux. And they certainly didn't have approximately eleventy bajillion lines of existing code, with more LoC changing on every release than these "RustOSes" have in their collective (and combined) codebases.

Mind you, I'm not holding Linux up as some holy untouchable artifact here -- But when your sales pitch is "It can do everything you need, only better!" it's incumbent on you to actually make good on that claim instead of moving the goalposts, okay?

It is the hight of hubris to believe that RustCulture(tm) will remain dominant when the TrueBelievers of Lake Woebegone [1] are diluted to homoeopathic levels.

[1] Where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the developers are above-average.

Downsides of C language culture?

Posted Aug 26, 2024 12:59 UTC (Mon) by mb (subscriber, #50428) [Link] (2 responses)

Linux is not implemented in standard C.
And Rust never claimed to be "universal replacement for Linux Kernel C".

>it's incumbent on you to actually make good on that claim

ridiculous

Downsides of C language culture?

Posted Aug 26, 2024 13:07 UTC (Mon) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (1 responses)

> Linux is not implemented in standard C.

As khim and other folks here are so quick to point out, pretty much nothing is implemented in purely "standard" C.

But if you're going to play that card, after many years of work, there are multiple versions of two completely independent toolchains that can be used to compile modern Linux. But only one Rust toolchain. One _version_ (ie the latest at that time) of the only extant Rust toolchain.

Not exactly a good argument to be making.

Downsides of C language culture?

Posted Aug 26, 2024 14:24 UTC (Mon) by intelfx (subscriber, #130118) [Link]

> But if you're going to play that card, after many years of work, there are multiple versions of two completely independent toolchains that can be used to compile modern Linux. But only one Rust toolchain. One _version_ (ie the latest at that time) of the only extant Rust toolchain.
>
> Not exactly a good argument to be making.

As you correctly say, it took the C codebase (and C toolchains) **many years of work** to get to this point. And it's still not "standard C" — it's still a pile of documented, non-documented and semi-documented extensions that only recently ended up being supported by another toolchain besides GCC.

And now a new contender (Rust) appears and in just a few months people are asking it to clear the bar that literally nothing else is held to?

I'm not a believer of the Church of Rust, far from it, but this line of argumentation is ridiculous (and disingenuous).