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I think Zig would be better suited. See: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/wiki/Why-Zig-When-There-is-Already-CPP%2C-D%2C-and-Rust%3F https://github.com/ziglang/z

I think Zig would be better suited. See: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/wiki/Why-Zig-When-There-is-Already-CPP%2C-D%2C-and-Rust%3F https://github.com/ziglang/zig/wiki/Why-Zig-When-There-is-Al...

Verdex_3 8y ago
This isn't quite what I was going to say, but it's close enough. I think parts of an OS can and should be written in something rust like, however the whole thing should probably not be written in rust. My personal thought is that C and C++ 98 era are bad, but they were what we needed at the time. Part of this badness was that you could do anything but exact facilities for specialized tasks had to be rolled from scratch. Libraries are possible, but not ideal (no namespaces for C and crazy header + recompile issues for both). In order to replace C and C++ we need more than just one language, we need an entire family of languages that all have the specific features implemented to support their domain. Rust can probably be used in game programming, but Zig (or in theory eventually Jai) is being specifically made with that goal in mind so they will probably be better. Rust itself will be much more useful for applications that cant stomach managed languages (ie web browsers, etc) because that's what they are specifically building it to do. It's got high level features in a form factor that you would expect from C#/Java with low runtime and no GC. We can probably write OSes in Rust or Zig, but ideally someone who really likes thinking about OSes will create a language specifically geared towards writing OSes that will be able to replace C.
ansible 8y ago
I took a brief look at Zig. The top slogan for Rust is "fearless concurrency", which ties back into the memory model, mutability and sharing references. This helps you prevent (at compile-time) data races and other interesting bugs. I didn't see any support for that in Zig at all.
- jungler 8y ago
  Last I checked Zig is more concerned about overflow conditions than Rust(numeric overflow, stack overflow, OOM etc.) and boasts features in that vein - so it competes, but not in the same territory. If you are writing a kernel it's highly likely that you'll end up in a lot of scenarios where you have to use unsafe Rust, in which case Zig would be the better language for the task. Admittedly, it would be nice to have some of both, and they both have room to get better. But I see Rust as more of a "libraries and applications" centric setup, where it's the right thing for a web browser and the wrong thing for a device driver.

I think Zig would be better suited. See: https://github.com/ziglang/zig/wiki/Why-Zig-When-There-is-Already-CPP%2C-D%2C-and-Rust%3F https://github.com/ziglang/zig/wiki/Why-Zig-When-There-is-Al...

Verdex_3 8y ago

This isn't quite what I was going to say, but it's close enough. I think parts of an OS can and should be written in something rust like, however the whole thing should probably not be written in rust. My personal thought is that C and C++ 98 era are bad, but they were what we needed at the time. Part of this badness was that you could do anything but exact facilities for specialized tasks had to be rolled from scratch. Libraries are possible, but not ideal (no namespaces for C and crazy header + recompile issues for both). In order to replace C and C++ we need more than just one language, we need an entire family of languages that all have the specific features implemented to support their domain. Rust can probably be used in game programming, but Zig (or in theory eventually Jai) is being specifically made with that goal in mind so they will probably be better. Rust itself will be much more useful for applications that cant stomach managed languages (ie web browsers, etc) because that's what they are specifically building it to do. It's got high level features in a form factor that you would expect from C#/Java with low runtime and no GC. We can probably write OSes in Rust or Zig, but ideally someone who really likes thinking about OSes will create a language specifically geared towards writing OSes that will be able to replace C.

ansible 8y ago

I took a brief look at Zig. The top slogan for Rust is "fearless concurrency", which ties back into the memory model, mutability and sharing references. This helps you prevent (at compile-time) data races and other interesting bugs. I didn't see any support for that in Zig at all.

jungler 8y ago
Last I checked Zig is more concerned about overflow conditions than Rust(numeric overflow, stack overflow, OOM etc.) and boasts features in that vein - so it competes, but not in the same territory. If you are writing a kernel it's highly likely that you'll end up in a lot of scenarios where you have to use unsafe Rust, in which case Zig would be the better language for the task. Admittedly, it would be nice to have some of both, and they both have room to get better. But I see Rust as more of a "libraries and applications" centric setup, where it's the right thing for a web browser and the wrong thing for a device driver.