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Captain Obvious here with a public service announcement: Rust's safety guarantees dont extend to logic or protocol implementation problems or misconfigured sec

Captain Obvious here with a public service announcement: Rust's safety guarantees dont extend to logic or protocol implementation problems or misconfigured security settings.the part of the article about service providers leaking creds or other info...Rust all the things and that will still happen. Some of this stuff is just too much. Also, why not work on lifetime and memory safety in a c based language? Rust looks like Klingon to me. functional-ish-ness is really hot right now. (Like Hansel.) There's this really sophomoric theme that this seems to be a part of that keeps resurfacing here. its almost like a conspiracy of influences made the wrong tech choice in the past and everything would be ok now if we used X. Where X could be haskell, rust, os2, plan 9, lisp, lisp, lisp, go...theres quite a few saviors out there they resurface every now and again.

jeffnotjeff 10y ago
dont forget microkernels.
Ar-Curunir 10y ago
There are ways to prevent some logic/protocol problems at the type level using rust: https://hoverbear.org/2016/10/12/rust-state-machine-pattern/ https://hoverbear.org/2016/10/12/rust-state-machine-pattern/ https://blog.tarn-vedra.de/posts/phantom-types-for-safe-apis.html https://blog.tarn-vedra.de/posts/phantom-types-for-safe-apis... https://insanitybit.github.io/2016/05/30/beyond-memory-safety-with-types https://insanitybit.github.io/2016/05/30/beyond-memory-safet... https://scribbles.pascalhertleif.de/elegant-apis-in-rust.html#session-types https://scribbles.pascalhertleif.de/elegant-apis-in-rust.htm... Some libraries use such features to prevent certain kinds of nonce-reuse during encryption (one of the more common ways of screwing up encryption). These constraints are checked at compile-time. Such guarantees are not possible with weaker type systems like that of C.
- youdontknowtho 10y ago
  I get what you are saying. "Software's Salvation" might require more than compile time type checking. I'm a huge strong typing fan! I'm just saying, type systems can get you a long way toward correct construction. (Or correctness by construction...) The issues with the software/computing world are bigger than array bounds checking and type correctness.
  - Ar-Curunir 10y ago
    > The issues with the software/computing world are bigger than array bounds checking and type correctness. Annoyingly, these bugs still bring down our systems in an age when we're on the verge of self-driving cars. Can you imagine that? Your car can crash because somewhere a programmer messed up a simple bounds check. By removing the possibility of these small annoying bugs, you leave the programmer free to focus on the big picture. That is the entire point of abstraction, and a language which strives to provide these abstractions at no cost to performance is inherently better than one that a) doesn't provide these abstractions b) doesn't provide mechanisms to handle the unabstracted layer safely.
    - youdontknowtho 10y ago
      Again, I get where you are going with this. Rust isn't the only solution. There are mechanisms that can be used in C++ to make a program memory safe by construction. I'm not even saying that Rust isn't a good solution. (I am saying I don't like the syntax...I'm sure I could get used to it at some point.) I just get very wary when something has this kind of "evangelism" behind it. That's all. I'm really looking forward to seeing what Mozilla does in Firefox with it.
      - agumonkey 10y ago
        Would you mind sharing other "correct by construction" ideas/references/libraries you know ?
        youdontknowtho 10y ago
        I was mainly talking about the C++ Guideline Support Library and GSL profile "checkers" that have been in process for the last couple of years. https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2015/12/03/c-core-guidelines-checkers-available-for-vs-2015-update-1/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2015/12/03/c-core-gu... https://github.com/Microsoft/GSL https://github.com/Microsoft/GSL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfmTagWcqoE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfmTagWcqoE
deleted 10y ago
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jeffnotjeff 10y ago

dont forget microkernels.

Ar-Curunir 10y ago

There are ways to prevent some logic/protocol problems at the type level using rust: https://hoverbear.org/2016/10/12/rust-state-machine-pattern/ https://hoverbear.org/2016/10/12/rust-state-machine-pattern/ https://blog.tarn-vedra.de/posts/phantom-types-for-safe-apis.html https://blog.tarn-vedra.de/posts/phantom-types-for-safe-apis... https://insanitybit.github.io/2016/05/30/beyond-memory-safety-with-types https://insanitybit.github.io/2016/05/30/beyond-memory-safet... https://scribbles.pascalhertleif.de/elegant-apis-in-rust.html#session-types https://scribbles.pascalhertleif.de/elegant-apis-in-rust.htm... Some libraries use such features to prevent certain kinds of nonce-reuse during encryption (one of the more common ways of screwing up encryption). These constraints are checked at compile-time. Such guarantees are not possible with weaker type systems like that of C.

youdontknowtho 10y ago
I get what you are saying. "Software's Salvation" might require more than compile time type checking. I'm a huge strong typing fan! I'm just saying, type systems can get you a long way toward correct construction. (Or correctness by construction...) The issues with the software/computing world are bigger than array bounds checking and type correctness.
- Ar-Curunir 10y ago
  > The issues with the software/computing world are bigger than array bounds checking and type correctness. Annoyingly, these bugs still bring down our systems in an age when we're on the verge of self-driving cars. Can you imagine that? Your car can crash because somewhere a programmer messed up a simple bounds check. By removing the possibility of these small annoying bugs, you leave the programmer free to focus on the big picture. That is the entire point of abstraction, and a language which strives to provide these abstractions at no cost to performance is inherently better than one that a) doesn't provide these abstractions b) doesn't provide mechanisms to handle the unabstracted layer safely.
  - youdontknowtho 10y ago
    Again, I get where you are going with this. Rust isn't the only solution. There are mechanisms that can be used in C++ to make a program memory safe by construction. I'm not even saying that Rust isn't a good solution. (I am saying I don't like the syntax...I'm sure I could get used to it at some point.) I just get very wary when something has this kind of "evangelism" behind it. That's all. I'm really looking forward to seeing what Mozilla does in Firefox with it.
    - agumonkey 10y ago
      Would you mind sharing other "correct by construction" ideas/references/libraries you know ?
      - youdontknowtho 10y ago
        I was mainly talking about the C++ Guideline Support Library and GSL profile "checkers" that have been in process for the last couple of years. https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2015/12/03/c-core-guidelines-checkers-available-for-vs-2015-update-1/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcblog/2015/12/03/c-core-gu... https://github.com/Microsoft/GSL https://github.com/Microsoft/GSL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfmTagWcqoE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfmTagWcqoE

deleted 10y ago

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