The Case for Rust (in the base system)

[astyle]

It's hard to imagine it getting any worse, isn't it?

The guy after whom McAfee antivirus is named - he was sorely disappointed in how his namesake company and software turned out. And even Bill Gates himself - he started out as a Lisp programmer who actually knows a thing or two about the value of being able to study the source code...

 

[Jose]

Two hours of reading Knuth and Wirth for penance should do it.

Harsh.

 

[blackbird9]

Harsh.

Yeah, I thought K&R and Larry Wall, but maybe that's not penance enough

 

[blackbird9]

It's hard to imagine it getting any worse, isn't it?

Think yourself lucky, you could have had "boris the world king" followed by "cheese-crazy mad liz"

 

[Crivens]

Think yourself lucky, you could have had "boris the world king" followed by "cheese-crazy mad liz"

We now have a black rock employee who, owning two private planes, calls himself "middle class". Let's see what he does, but I have my doubts.

 

[blackbird9]

hahaha... well, you could always try a lettuce, it worked for us, best PM we've had in years

 

[msplsh]

This isn't about Rust anymore.

 

[kpedersen]

This isn't about Rust anymore.

It rarely is. Usually it is about egos and misinformation from the Rust brigaders rather than merit and disadvantages of the language itself.

 

[cracauer@]

It rarely is. Usually it is about egos and misinformation from the Rust brigaders rather than merit and disadvantages of the language itself.

There is some good information in this thread - even on Rust

All the other Rust flamewars out there are worse.

 

[kpedersen]

There is some good information in this thread - even on Rust

All the other Rust flamewars out there are worse.

True. I suppose I was being a tad facetious

The majority of discussions on these forums are of a higher quality than the wider internet to be fair.

 

[msplsh]

The majority of discussions on these forums are of a higher quality than the wider internet to be fair.

I would not put this place above Reddit.

 

[kpedersen]

I would not put this place above Reddit.

Oh I certainly would. The fact that you can share the same account between crypto, hookups, anime memes and FreeBSD, instantly eliminates any semblance of barrier of entry to a community discussing a technical operating system.

On these forums, low effort users and their posts are already slightly filtered out by a trivial signup and email verification process (luckily). Mailing lists even more so because low quality users are seemingly intimidated by "old" processes.

But going back a bit. When it comes to "wider internet", Reddit is so low down on the list, it didn't even come to mind. I was more thinking Stack Overflow, The Register, etc. Actual tech communities rather than glorified social media.

 

[msplsh]

Requiring higher effort doesn't filter out ad hominem or no true scotsman.

Anyway, the guy blocking the Rust interface into DMA relinquished his gatekeeping position. So, Asahi can probably get that driver merged.

 

[kpedersen]

Anyway, the guy blocking the Rust interface into DMA relinquished his gatekeeping position. So, Asahi can probably get that driver merged.

One down in the long queue of experienced developers that remain equally unconvinced

Requiring higher effort doesn't filter out ad hominem or no true scotsman.

I don't think either of those terms are correct when referring to people who are skeptical (or overly convinced) about the merits of Rust

 

[msplsh]

The "experienced developer" who was a "skeptic" had no good reason and Linus called him on the mat.

 

[astyle]

Oh I certainly would. The fact that you can share the same account between crypto, hookups, anime memes and FreeBSD, instantly eliminates any semblance of barrier of entry to a community discussing a technical operating system.

On these forums, low effort users and their posts are already slightly filtered out by a trivial signup and email verification process (luckily). Mailing lists even more so because low quality users are seemingly intimidated by "old" processes.

to top it off, you can sign into Reddit with Gmail authemtication, no password required, let Google and their advertisers know you went there!

But sometimes, it does have pretty apt humor that I found to be pretty symbolic of what's happening: snotty brats not out of diapers, showing us the door!

 

[drhowarddrfine]

I would not put this place above Reddit.

Reddit is the place where people who no one will give the time of day to go. It's a manure dumpster fire. An enormous but pure dung heap. And I'm being nice with that description.

 

[astyle]

Reddit is the place where people who no one will give the time of day to go. It's a manure dumpster fire. An enormous but pure dung heap. And I'm being nice with that description.

Reddit??? I thought DOGE fits that description after Musk took over...

 

[Beastie7]

after the ship sinks it becomes... rusty.

I'll see myself out.

 

[wismos]

Capsicum doesn't get enough love and attention it deserves. I think capsicumizing more of base would be a better use of work and resources IMO. Assuming the regurgitated premise of Rust is "better security". Why rewrite stuff that works for cool points?

i second this, capsicum is really great, would be nice to see sandboxing standardised

 

[Rock]

Well since Musk is probably next in line, if Gates was a little more weird, I could see this happen.

McEnroe to the tennis judge: Answer the Q. Gates does not want to be president.

 

[bakul]

I think so. SBCL (it's fork) is much better in every respect except maybe some floating point operations.

Looks like CMUCL is being worked on again! The latest snapshot is from 2024-08, though no FreeBSD binaries. https://gitlab.common-lisp.net/cmucl/cmucl/-/wikis/home

 

[cracauer@]

Looks like CMUCL is being worked on again! The latest snapshot is from 2024-08, though no FreeBSD binaries. https://gitlab.common-lisp.net/cmucl/cmucl/-/wikis/home

Raymond Toy is hardcore. I never learned what he does with Lisp, though.

 

[T-Aoki]

I'm still neutral about Rust (but my thought is still that it should be more C friendly by default on linking together for looooong transition timeframe and that strict standardization for keeping backward compatibilities after the point is mandatory), but for anyone interested:

Early PoC for introducing Rust into userland is disclosed by HardenedBSD project.
Related toot on Mastodon by Shawn Webb is here.

 

[kpedersen]

Early PoC for introducing Rust into userland is disclosed by HardenedBSD project.
Related toot on Mastodon by Shawn Webb is here.

Shawn Webb's post highlights the issue quite well.

"We also need to come up with a formal method of bringing in vendored #Rust crates into the src tree."

Thats basically where it has already failed. There is going to be multiple hundreds of these things for an entire userland (all fragile bindings against POSIX stuff and other micro-dependency crap). And the upstream will change almost daily, just like NPM, CPAN, PIP does. Crates.io is just another clone of these.