3 ms·

> These things can be reduced to nuisance level by discipline. Obviously not. We've been doing this for decades and are still making the same mistakes with cos

> These things can be reduced to nuisance level by discipline. Obviously not. We've been doing this for decades and are still making the same mistakes with costly effects. Humans are as much a part of technological systems as the language or platform; continuing to ignore that even educated, disciplined, skilled developers are prone to certain classes of errors -- errors that could be obviated by other components of the system -- is hubris. It is much more feasible to create tools that exclude certain classes of error than to create less fallible developers. > (code size; execution speed; random latencies) Rust is not GC'ed, has no inherent reason to be slower than C (as the toolchain matures), and I doubt is more verbose than C code that provides the same safety.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Speak for yourself. A power saw is dangerous; but I'm not going back thanks. And nothing to say about the performance cost of these infallible tools? They are not free.
- kbenson 11y ago
  > A power saw is dangerous; but I'm not going back thanks. And now we have power saws that immediately stop when they encounter flesh. Obviously, disciplined users never had to worry about that system, otherwise we would have had a bunch of people missing fingers... like my wood shop teacher in high school. :/ > And nothing to say about the performance cost of these infallible tools? They are not free. People have brought this up a few times, but I've never gotten an explanation that makes sense. My understanding is that Rust does most of its protections in the compile stage, so while not free, they are a small up-front cost at the compile stage, plus an indeterminate cost at the development stage in possible more complex reasoning about the code, which then pays off over the lifetime of the application. While not free, that's definitely a trade-off that seems to make sense to me. Or are you talking about some other cost? Can you explain where I'm not understanding your point?
- unscaled 11y ago
  Right, except that Rust is a modern power saw with safety enclosure and C is a rusted chainsaw that only works half of the time.
  - wepple 11y ago
    "only works half the time" is a bit of a stretch. what's your OS kernel written in? I agree we could do better than C. Everyone here talks about it every time this happens, but does nothing. I'll take battle-hardened C over written-last-week Rust, too. Especially crypto code.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago

Speak for yourself. A power saw is dangerous; but I'm not going back thanks. And nothing to say about the performance cost of these infallible tools? They are not free.

kbenson 11y ago
> A power saw is dangerous; but I'm not going back thanks. And now we have power saws that immediately stop when they encounter flesh. Obviously, disciplined users never had to worry about that system, otherwise we would have had a bunch of people missing fingers... like my wood shop teacher in high school. :/ > And nothing to say about the performance cost of these infallible tools? They are not free. People have brought this up a few times, but I've never gotten an explanation that makes sense. My understanding is that Rust does most of its protections in the compile stage, so while not free, they are a small up-front cost at the compile stage, plus an indeterminate cost at the development stage in possible more complex reasoning about the code, which then pays off over the lifetime of the application. While not free, that's definitely a trade-off that seems to make sense to me. Or are you talking about some other cost? Can you explain where I'm not understanding your point?
unscaled 11y ago
Right, except that Rust is a modern power saw with safety enclosure and C is a rusted chainsaw that only works half of the time.
- wepple 11y ago
  "only works half the time" is a bit of a stretch. what's your OS kernel written in? I agree we could do better than C. Everyone here talks about it every time this happens, but does nothing. I'll take battle-hardened C over written-last-week Rust, too. Especially crypto code.