4 ms·

I am not sure what to make of this: the author is a cto of a 100~ person company, but he is thinking that a project like pg can be realistically rewritten in ru

by diziet 10y ago

I am not sure what to make of this: the author is a cto of a 100~ person company, but he is thinking that a project like pg can be realistically rewritten in rust. I just don't get it. Even if you could somehow make the 'complicated' and 'scary' parts of the code base magically transform into rust (much less handle performance and other issues due to memory management being different between c and rust), how would you maintain that project? Ai driven code translation from c to rust is a singularity too soon.

rtpg 10y ago
What's the argument against possible Rust porting of Postgres? Because of the interop ease, it's not hard to imagine a multi-year peicemeal rewrite. Postgres' code has some pretty good idioms that could be nicely encoded in Rust, and a good separation of concerns
- jeffdavis 10y ago
  The biggest argument against it is falling into the "pure technical" trap. Postgres has a great focus on solving real problems for real people. Losing that focus would be a disaster.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >What's the argument against possible Rust porting of Postgres? That's putting the cart before the horse. The right question is: a) What's the argument in favor of porting Postgres to Rust? and b) What's the opportunity cost?
ww520 10y ago
This is worrisome for the company, to have someone as clueless about technical work scope and estimate to be in charge of the technical department. Or is that more of a political post?
- nickez 10y ago
  > clueless about technical work scope Do you mean that it would be impossible for a team of experts in C and rust to rewrite pg in 5 years? That is essentially what he is proposing. (Which probably isn't a great idea, but I think the work scope estimate is in the right ball park.)
  - coldtea 10y ago
    The way he proposes it, and the reasoning behind it all scream "clueless". Reminds me of first year CS students who after learning that assembly is lower level and can be faster than C, wanted OSes and applications to be written in assembly for speed.
flylib 10y ago
very odd company in reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trustly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trustly
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
rmccue 10y ago
He clarified in a later email [0]: I'm just asking possibly stupid questions and having possibly stupid theories, trying to understand why such a project would be possible or not. [0]: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CAASwCXfn1TJwru0ZHGMthUr9TA0JF-UVahppUTbD0HqUgXSU_g%40mail.gmail.com https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CAASwCXfn1TJwru0ZHGMth...
- thesmallestcat 10y ago
  Translation: "I'm wasting everybody's time."
ziotom78 10y ago
This reminds me of an episode that happened roughly ten years ago. I am a cosmologist and I have worked to the ESA Planck mission [1], a spacecraft launched in 2009 to study the Cosmic Microwave Background. Planck was the successor of another spacecraft, WMAP [2], which was launched by NASA in 2001. One of the bosses working for one of our industrial partners was completely clueless about the details of the mission and the context. One day, he entered the office of one of his employees: - Hi Bob [fake name], do you know anything about this Planck stuff? - Sure, I'm working full time on Planck. - Good! And do you know what WMAP is? - Of course I do! - Great! Now listen, if WMAP run on Windows, you should definitely install it on my computer, so I can play with it. [1] http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Planck http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Planck [2] https://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/ https://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/
rajivm 10y ago
He also has a blog dedicated to Postgres: https://joelonsql.com/ https://joelonsql.com/

by diziet 10y ago

rtpg 10y ago

What's the argument against possible Rust porting of Postgres? Because of the interop ease, it's not hard to imagine a multi-year peicemeal rewrite. Postgres' code has some pretty good idioms that could be nicely encoded in Rust, and a good separation of concerns

jeffdavis 10y ago
The biggest argument against it is falling into the "pure technical" trap. Postgres has a great focus on solving real problems for real people. Losing that focus would be a disaster.
coldtea 10y ago
>What's the argument against possible Rust porting of Postgres? That's putting the cart before the horse. The right question is: a) What's the argument in favor of porting Postgres to Rust? and b) What's the opportunity cost?

ww520 10y ago

This is worrisome for the company, to have someone as clueless about technical work scope and estimate to be in charge of the technical department. Or is that more of a political post?

nickez 10y ago
> clueless about technical work scope Do you mean that it would be impossible for a team of experts in C and rust to rewrite pg in 5 years? That is essentially what he is proposing. (Which probably isn't a great idea, but I think the work scope estimate is in the right ball park.)
- coldtea 10y ago
  The way he proposes it, and the reasoning behind it all scream "clueless". Reminds me of first year CS students who after learning that assembly is lower level and can be faster than C, wanted OSes and applications to be written in assembly for speed.

flylib 10y ago

very odd company in reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trustly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trustly

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

rmccue 10y ago

He clarified in a later email [0]: I'm just asking possibly stupid questions and having possibly stupid theories, trying to understand why such a project would be possible or not. [0]: https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CAASwCXfn1TJwru0ZHGMthUr9TA0JF-UVahppUTbD0HqUgXSU_g%40mail.gmail.com https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CAASwCXfn1TJwru0ZHGMth...

thesmallestcat 10y ago
Translation: "I'm wasting everybody's time."

ziotom78 10y ago

This reminds me of an episode that happened roughly ten years ago. I am a cosmologist and I have worked to the ESA Planck mission [1], a spacecraft launched in 2009 to study the Cosmic Microwave Background. Planck was the successor of another spacecraft, WMAP [2], which was launched by NASA in 2001. One of the bosses working for one of our industrial partners was completely clueless about the details of the mission and the context. One day, he entered the office of one of his employees: - Hi Bob [fake name], do you know anything about this Planck stuff? - Sure, I'm working full time on Planck. - Good! And do you know what WMAP is? - Of course I do! - Great! Now listen, if WMAP run on Windows, you should definitely install it on my computer, so I can play with it. [1] http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Planck http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Planck [2] https://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/ https://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/

rajivm 10y ago

He also has a blog dedicated to Postgres: https://joelonsql.com/ https://joelonsql.com/