4 ms·

A little defensive, maybe? I never claimed Rust was slower than C or that it had a performance penalty (because you should use unsafe). Actually, I pretty much

A little defensive, maybe? I never claimed Rust was slower than C or that it had a performance penalty (because you should use unsafe). Actually, I pretty much said the opposite. I said they were the same. I was trying to highlight the fact that unsafe Rust and C are not that different when you're doing bitwise operations on bare metal. I was wanted to drive the point that additional abstractions are undesirable at that low level unless they can be enforced at compile time. I'm concerned by some of the magical thinking being espoused in this thread about what's actually reasonable in terms of the trade offs you can make. In other words I was talking about safety, not speed. I'm glad to hear Rust is out performing C though. I just wish I had a better IDE than atom... Didn't you once mention Xcode support for Rust?

nightpool 11y ago
pcwalton is talking about safe rust. Unsafe rust is not really any faster in a lot of cases, and even when it is the goal is to compartmentalize the unsafe code into very small, distinct, easily testable segments.
- autoreleasepool 11y ago
  Again, I'm not talking about performance. I'm talking about low level safety and the difficulties in achieving that in any meaningful way. I wasn't talking about just Rust when I said abstractions cost you speed. It was a (perhaps unclear) general statement about programming. As an aside, unsafe rust is faster than safe rust for a lot of cases. I re-read what I wrote and I fail to see where I attacked or even (God forbid) criticized Rust. So far IME, the rust community is extremely defensive and antagonistic to anyone they perceive to have made the slightest criticism. It's immature and irritating. It's the only thing that really turns me off from fully embracing it. I can't participate in a community that's fundamentally hostile to skepticism.
  - kbenson 11y ago
    > Again, I'm not talking about performance. But previously you said "because it can't be safe at such a low level without a performance penalty" which clearly implies performance is part of your argument. This is what I was talking about in my other reply, which mentioned "without narrowing the scope or clarifying your intent". > I re-read what I wrote and I fail to see where I attacked or even (God forbid) criticized Rust. This is more about backing up claims with concrete examples. pcwalton is a Rust developer, I'm sure he would be very happy to hear a specific shortcoming he wasn't aware of, or was undervaluing. That's how improvements are made. > So far IME, the rust community is extremely defensive and antagonistic to anyone they perceive to have made the slightest criticism. It's immature and irritating. It's the only thing that really turns me off from fully embracing it. There may be some of that, but I also see a lot of rust community members trying to explain where people's assumptions are wrong, and it being taken as being antagonistic. The fact that Rust has some compile time checking that could actually make some of the low-level code faster is what I think is being alluded to by pcwalton. Of course there will be things that rust won't catch, and will need to be done in both C and rust, and there's things that other languages may catch that rust doesn't and vice-versa. > I can't participate in a community that's fundamentally hostile to skepticism. That's an interesting way to put it. You've made assertions, and when asked for clarification or evidence, began your response by calling the other commentor's motives into question (is it a reasoned response, or was it overly emotional because they were "defensive"). Asking for evidence of assertions is skepticism, and to balk in face of requests to do so is actually what I would consider being defensive. To be absolutely clear, I don't think you would have been downvoted if you didn't start your reply with "A little defensive, maybe?". I didn't downvote you, but my initial assumption was that the downvoting I saw was because of that.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
      - kbenson 11y ago
        Well, I'm by no means part of the rust community, so don't let anything I say reflect upon them. That said, how else do you correct someone in the case their statements are provably false? Edit: Whoops, "probably" was supposed to be "provably" :/
kbenson 11y ago
It's not defensive to ask for evidence of a claim. If your statements are too general to be backed up without narrowing the scope or clarifying your intent, it's hardly the other person's fault for requesting clarification or evidence.
- autoreleasepool 11y ago
  Just Asking Questions is a technique that's often used to derail or humiliate a verbal opponent. Forgive me for being cautious. Also, my statement was not that general or vague. Maybe it could have been clearer, but it appears to have also been misinterpreted by pcwalton.

nightpool 11y ago

pcwalton is talking about safe rust. Unsafe rust is not really any faster in a lot of cases, and even when it is the goal is to compartmentalize the unsafe code into very small, distinct, easily testable segments.

autoreleasepool 11y ago
Again, I'm not talking about performance. I'm talking about low level safety and the difficulties in achieving that in any meaningful way. I wasn't talking about just Rust when I said abstractions cost you speed. It was a (perhaps unclear) general statement about programming. As an aside, unsafe rust is faster than safe rust for a lot of cases. I re-read what I wrote and I fail to see where I attacked or even (God forbid) criticized Rust. So far IME, the rust community is extremely defensive and antagonistic to anyone they perceive to have made the slightest criticism. It's immature and irritating. It's the only thing that really turns me off from fully embracing it. I can't participate in a community that's fundamentally hostile to skepticism.
- kbenson 11y ago
  > Again, I'm not talking about performance. But previously you said "because it can't be safe at such a low level without a performance penalty" which clearly implies performance is part of your argument. This is what I was talking about in my other reply, which mentioned "without narrowing the scope or clarifying your intent". > I re-read what I wrote and I fail to see where I attacked or even (God forbid) criticized Rust. This is more about backing up claims with concrete examples. pcwalton is a Rust developer, I'm sure he would be very happy to hear a specific shortcoming he wasn't aware of, or was undervaluing. That's how improvements are made. > So far IME, the rust community is extremely defensive and antagonistic to anyone they perceive to have made the slightest criticism. It's immature and irritating. It's the only thing that really turns me off from fully embracing it. There may be some of that, but I also see a lot of rust community members trying to explain where people's assumptions are wrong, and it being taken as being antagonistic. The fact that Rust has some compile time checking that could actually make some of the low-level code faster is what I think is being alluded to by pcwalton. Of course there will be things that rust won't catch, and will need to be done in both C and rust, and there's things that other languages may catch that rust doesn't and vice-versa. > I can't participate in a community that's fundamentally hostile to skepticism. That's an interesting way to put it. You've made assertions, and when asked for clarification or evidence, began your response by calling the other commentor's motives into question (is it a reasoned response, or was it overly emotional because they were "defensive"). Asking for evidence of assertions is skepticism, and to balk in face of requests to do so is actually what I would consider being defensive. To be absolutely clear, I don't think you would have been downvoted if you didn't start your reply with "A little defensive, maybe?". I didn't downvote you, but my initial assumption was that the downvoting I saw was because of that.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
    - kbenson 11y ago
      Well, I'm by no means part of the rust community, so don't let anything I say reflect upon them. That said, how else do you correct someone in the case their statements are provably false? Edit: Whoops, "probably" was supposed to be "provably" :/

kbenson 11y ago

It's not defensive to ask for evidence of a claim. If your statements are too general to be backed up without narrowing the scope or clarifying your intent, it's hardly the other person's fault for requesting clarification or evidence.

autoreleasepool 11y ago
Just Asking Questions is a technique that's often used to derail or humiliate a verbal opponent. Forgive me for being cautious. Also, my statement was not that general or vague. Maybe it could have been clearer, but it appears to have also been misinterpreted by pcwalton.