4 ms·

So what are the alternatives for system programming? Rust, Golang? Any other true contenders?

masklinn 7y ago
It really depends what you mean by "system programming". If you mean things like foundational libraries & network stacks, then go is not a contender[0]. If you mean system daemons and the like, then languages like ocaml, D, … should also work (and that's assuming you want / need the performance of a native binary, if you don't then the world's your oyster). [0] to my understanding — and I may be completely mistaken here — memory-safe ADA with dynamic allocation and without GC is pretty much an active research field so fails either "memory safe" or "suitable for going fast"
- gmueckl 7y ago
  D with its conservative GC may run into random issues on 32 bit platforms. I have seen this effect in some rather trivial programs that should have used only a few MB of memory, but ended up eating up their whole address space and crashing. Not all D programs are affected all the time, mind you. But it's a bummer if it happens. Having made this experience, I doubt that conservative GC can ever be declared safe, unlike completely precise GC.
  - skocznymroczny 7y ago
    D 2.085 added support for precise garbage collector.
    - gmueckl 7y ago
      It is still not enabled by default, though. I would suspect that you need to audit your code for pointers stored in integers amd other shenanigans before enabling it in production.
- titzer 7y ago
  > then go is not a contender[0] > [0] ... memory-safe ADA with dynamic allocation and without GC is pretty much an active research field so fails either "memory safe" or "suitable for going fast" Why would D with a conservative collector be "more efficient"? How does being conservative (with stack roots, presumably) fundamentally make a GC better? Why would OCaml be better than Go? OCaml is garbage-collected, no opting out.
  - simiones 7y ago
    I think the idea was: if by systems programming we mean OS-level or similar, then Go is not a contender, only Rust (from the initial list). However, if by systems programming we mean daemons or other user-space programs, then the list can be extended, from Go and Rust to Go, Rust, D, OCaml etc.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      Real Time Java on bare metal, Oberon on bare metal (Astrobe), System C#, Modula-3,...
  - masklinn 7y ago
    > Why would D with a conservative collector be "more efficient"? How does being conservative (with stack roots, presumably) fundamentally make a GC better? It wouldn't? The footnote was for Ada's applicability in the context of "foundational libraries & network stacks" (as it's often advertised as a very safe yet low-level language), because in my understanding (and again I could be wrong here) it's either GC'd and memory-safe or neither, so same as e.g. D, making it unsuitable for that layer. > Why would OCaml be better than Go? OCaml is garbage-collected, no opting out. It wouldn't either? The "also" is the second clause indicates that Go would be suitable for "systems daemons and the like", and so would pretty much any other memory-safe language, possibly restricted to the more efficient ones (non-interpreted / JITed) depending on the specific use-case.
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      Real Time Java on bare metal, Oberon on bare metal (Astrobe), System C#, Modula-3,...
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Guess in what language Fuchsia IO volume management and TCP/IP stack is written on.
jplayer01 7y ago
I feel like Rust is the most obvious one. I've seen a slew of common Linux tools being rewritten in Rust recently (https://github.com/rust-unofficial/awesome-rust#system-tools https://github.com/rust-unofficial/awesome-rust#system-tools).
rowanG077 7y ago
only Rust at this time.
swebs 7y ago
I'm pretty fond of Java (OpenJDK) since it also offers portability. Yes Java is much slower than Rust, but it's fine when high performance isn't necessary.
- zkomp 7y ago
  Neither Java nor Go for system programming. Java and its license is also controlled by one of the most evil companies, google at least pretend not to be evil...
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Real Time Java proves otherwise. And then there is this pseudo-copy of Java running on phones and IoT as well, both support writing user space drivers in Java. Fuchsia's IO volumne management and TCP/IP stack is written in Go. ChromeOS hypervisor (gVisor) and Android GPU debugger (GAPI) are written in Go.
  - swebs 7y ago
    >Java and its license is also controlled by one of the most evil companies Does that have any affect on OpenJDK?
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      OpenJDK is GPL, you can take it and do whatever you want in spite the fact that that evil company does like 90% of the work and no one else has stepped up to pick Sun's remains, regardless how Oracle has managed the assets afterwards. OpenJDK wasn't yet a thing when the other data collection evil company decided they didn't want to pay for licenses like everyone else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Java_virtual_machines#Proprietary_implementations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Java_virtual_machines#... None of the companies described there had any issue either with Sun nor with Oracle. Nor the ones repacking Oracle's work (some of them do contribute a bit to OpenJDK as well to be fair, although usually not JEPs) with their own additional features, https://adoptopenjdk.net/sponsors.html https://adoptopenjdk.net/sponsors.html "James Gosling Triangulation's Interview on Google vs. Sun" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYw3X4RZv6Y&feature=youtu.be&t=57m42s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYw3X4RZv6Y&feature=youtu.be... Meanwhile the other vendors listed above do care about supporting the JVM ecosystem at large, so no worries, OpenJDK is alright. And if Oracle does get bored of it, it would be interesting to see if any of them actually cares a bit more than they did with Sun.
snaky 7y ago
ATS, Ada
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  ATS looks interesting. It continues to boggle my mind that Ada/SPARK isn't given more attention in conversations like this. It seems to do everything Rust promises while being simpler (SPARK anyway) and more powerful, and with 40 years of history and experience behind it.
  - masklinn 7y ago
    My understanding is that Ada has memory-safety issues (or leaks like a sieve) if dynamic allocations are used and GC is not.
    - scottlocklin 7y ago
      Ada doesn't use a garbage collector, so it appears that understanding isn't right. I think it had one as part of the standard in the 80s, but maybe such problems made it go away.
olodus 7y ago
Zig to some degree, but that is still manual memory management. But it do remove some of the undefined behavior.
nimmer 7y ago
Nim for sure. It's faster and can generate shared libraries.
pjmlp 7y ago
Besides Rust and Go, Swift, .NET Native, Ada, D for example.

It really depends what you mean by "system programming". If you mean things like foundational libraries & network stacks, then go is not a contender[0]. If you mean system daemons and the like, then languages like ocaml, D, … should also work (and that's assuming you want / need the performance of a native binary, if you don't then the world's your oyster). [0] to my understanding — and I may be completely mistaken here — memory-safe ADA with dynamic allocation and without GC is pretty much an active research field so fails either "memory safe" or "suitable for going fast"

gmueckl 7y ago
D with its conservative GC may run into random issues on 32 bit platforms. I have seen this effect in some rather trivial programs that should have used only a few MB of memory, but ended up eating up their whole address space and crashing. Not all D programs are affected all the time, mind you. But it's a bummer if it happens. Having made this experience, I doubt that conservative GC can ever be declared safe, unlike completely precise GC.
- skocznymroczny 7y ago
  D 2.085 added support for precise garbage collector.
  - gmueckl 7y ago
    It is still not enabled by default, though. I would suspect that you need to audit your code for pointers stored in integers amd other shenanigans before enabling it in production.
titzer 7y ago
> then go is not a contender[0] > [0] ... memory-safe ADA with dynamic allocation and without GC is pretty much an active research field so fails either "memory safe" or "suitable for going fast" Why would D with a conservative collector be "more efficient"? How does being conservative (with stack roots, presumably) fundamentally make a GC better? Why would OCaml be better than Go? OCaml is garbage-collected, no opting out.
- simiones 7y ago
  I think the idea was: if by systems programming we mean OS-level or similar, then Go is not a contender, only Rust (from the initial list). However, if by systems programming we mean daemons or other user-space programs, then the list can be extended, from Go and Rust to Go, Rust, D, OCaml etc.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Real Time Java on bare metal, Oberon on bare metal (Astrobe), System C#, Modula-3,...
- masklinn 7y ago
  > Why would D with a conservative collector be "more efficient"? How does being conservative (with stack roots, presumably) fundamentally make a GC better? It wouldn't? The footnote was for Ada's applicability in the context of "foundational libraries & network stacks" (as it's often advertised as a very safe yet low-level language), because in my understanding (and again I could be wrong here) it's either GC'd and memory-safe or neither, so same as e.g. D, making it unsuitable for that layer. > Why would OCaml be better than Go? OCaml is garbage-collected, no opting out. It wouldn't either? The "also" is the second clause indicates that Go would be suitable for "systems daemons and the like", and so would pretty much any other memory-safe language, possibly restricted to the more efficient ones (non-interpreted / JITed) depending on the specific use-case.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Real Time Java on bare metal, Oberon on bare metal (Astrobe), System C#, Modula-3,...
pjmlp 7y ago
Guess in what language Fuchsia IO volume management and TCP/IP stack is written on.

jplayer01 7y ago

I feel like Rust is the most obvious one. I've seen a slew of common Linux tools being rewritten in Rust recently (https://github.com/rust-unofficial/awesome-rust#system-tools https://github.com/rust-unofficial/awesome-rust#system-tools).

rowanG077 7y ago

only Rust at this time.

swebs 7y ago

I'm pretty fond of Java (OpenJDK) since it also offers portability. Yes Java is much slower than Rust, but it's fine when high performance isn't necessary.

zkomp 7y ago
Neither Java nor Go for system programming. Java and its license is also controlled by one of the most evil companies, google at least pretend not to be evil...
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Real Time Java proves otherwise. And then there is this pseudo-copy of Java running on phones and IoT as well, both support writing user space drivers in Java. Fuchsia's IO volumne management and TCP/IP stack is written in Go. ChromeOS hypervisor (gVisor) and Android GPU debugger (GAPI) are written in Go.
- swebs 7y ago
  >Java and its license is also controlled by one of the most evil companies Does that have any affect on OpenJDK?
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    OpenJDK is GPL, you can take it and do whatever you want in spite the fact that that evil company does like 90% of the work and no one else has stepped up to pick Sun's remains, regardless how Oracle has managed the assets afterwards. OpenJDK wasn't yet a thing when the other data collection evil company decided they didn't want to pay for licenses like everyone else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Java_virtual_machines#Proprietary_implementations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Java_virtual_machines#... None of the companies described there had any issue either with Sun nor with Oracle. Nor the ones repacking Oracle's work (some of them do contribute a bit to OpenJDK as well to be fair, although usually not JEPs) with their own additional features, https://adoptopenjdk.net/sponsors.html https://adoptopenjdk.net/sponsors.html "James Gosling Triangulation's Interview on Google vs. Sun" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYw3X4RZv6Y&feature=youtu.be&t=57m42s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYw3X4RZv6Y&feature=youtu.be... Meanwhile the other vendors listed above do care about supporting the JVM ecosystem at large, so no worries, OpenJDK is alright. And if Oracle does get bored of it, it would be interesting to see if any of them actually cares a bit more than they did with Sun.

snaky 7y ago

ATS, Ada

scottlocklin 7y ago
ATS looks interesting. It continues to boggle my mind that Ada/SPARK isn't given more attention in conversations like this. It seems to do everything Rust promises while being simpler (SPARK anyway) and more powerful, and with 40 years of history and experience behind it.
- masklinn 7y ago
  My understanding is that Ada has memory-safety issues (or leaks like a sieve) if dynamic allocations are used and GC is not.
  - scottlocklin 7y ago
    Ada doesn't use a garbage collector, so it appears that understanding isn't right. I think it had one as part of the standard in the 80s, but maybe such problems made it go away.

olodus 7y ago

Zig to some degree, but that is still manual memory management. But it do remove some of the undefined behavior.

nimmer 7y ago

Nim for sure. It's faster and can generate shared libraries.

pjmlp 7y ago

Besides Rust and Go, Swift, .NET Native, Ada, D for example.