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Mozilla developed Rust specifically for this kind of rewrite. That was the entire point of it. (As relayed to me by one of the designers in 2011 or so.) They d

Mozilla developed Rust specifically for this kind of rewrite. That was the entire point of it. (As relayed to me by one of the designers in 2011 or so.) They didn't think just a rewrite in C would be enough, they didn't think any other existing language would be sufficient, and then they went off to design Rust. So the statement "Firefox is also the entity that invented Rust" kind of misses the point.

ReactiveJelly 6y ago
Some people seem to think Mozilla gets royalties every time you invoke rustc. And that if I just took off my rose-tinted glasses, I'd realize my Rust code is buggy, unsafe, slow, and hard to maintain, and the only reason I'm using Rust is because of hype. It was pretty hyped when I started using it, in 2015.
- chinesempire 6y ago
  > And that if I just took off my rose-tinted glasses, I'd realize my Rust code is buggy, unsafe, slow, and hard to maintain I didn't get the impression. I understood that Firefox talks about their success in rewriting in Rust because it's their language, they control it and are the major sponsor and user. I don't think Google or MS or any other company heavily involved in crafting programming languages for their own purposes will ever go that route for some of their core software, because they can't control the language and if they tried they would get the blame for trying.
  - steveklabnik 6y ago
    Mozilla does not control Rust. Google and Microsoft are both already using Rust for real products.
    - chinesempire 6y ago
      Not core. There will never be Rust in Chrome or in Office. Mozilla controls Rust because it's the largest Rust user. Just like Google controls Go, even though it's opensource. You said it yourself "the only real way to get a job working on Rust was to work at Mozilla"
      - steveklabnik 6y ago
        > There will never be Rust in Chrome There is a branch in the repository right now trying it out. Rust is also used in ChromeOS. > Mozilla controls Rust because it's the largest Rust user. Mozilla is not the largest Rust user, nor does the largest user control the language. Governance is consensus-based, and anyone is eligible to join. > You said it yourself "the only real way to get a job working on Rust was to work at Mozilla" I may have said that a long, long time ago, but it's not true today. The Rust team at Mozilla has been shrinking, and other companies have been letting folks work on Rust as part of their job. And volunteers are like, 10x-25x more numerous than people who are paid to do so.
        chinesempire 6y ago
        > There is a branch in the repository right now trying it out. Rust is also used in ChromeOS. ChromeOS is a dead product. > Mozilla is not the largest Rust user Who is then? > Governance is consensus-based, and anyone is eligible to join. Same thing Google says about Go. If Google is really interested in Rust I don't believe they will let the community keep the governance, I might be wrong, but better safe than sorry. Is Google trying to take control over Rust?
        steveklabnik 6y ago
        It's really clear that no matter what evidence I provide, you're going to dismiss it, so I just won't bother anymore.
        chinesempire 6y ago
        It's called a discussion. You're not even aknowledging the fact that there could be different opinions on the matter, if I was you I wouldn't play the card "you're dismissing evidence". You work on Rust, that's a fact, I'm giving you credit for it. Can you say it doesn't affect your judgement at all?
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        Rust is now an official UWP / WinUI binding, part of Project Reunion, core Windows platform, and is shipping on Visual Studio Code and Azure IoT products. Office will eventually make use of it.
lostjohnny 6y ago
> So the statement "Firefox is also the entity that invented Rust" kind of misses the point. The point is that Rust improved Firefox codebase, but that only speaks about Firefox ability to write code in C/C++, Firefox has improved as a browser, but who can prove it is because of Rust or because their legacy code base was shit in the first place? Chrome stole their market shares overnight and it's still a better browser, the reason to use Firefox over Chrome are only ethical and political. And I do use Firefox over Chrome, always did, even when Firefox was the slowest in the bunch and could literally kill the battery on my MBP while Chrome literally flied on it, I did when Firefox was named Firebird, I did when it was named Phoenix, when it was Mozilla and Netscape before that - I still own a Netscape 3 gold license. And even that edge is slowing disappearing. They recently deleted one of my extension because Google pressured them to, I couldn't reach any human technical support, they didn't explain why they did it, except for the Google notice, the extension had only a few hundreds users and it just displayed some content hidden in the page with CSS. Their policy towards extensions is rapidly going in the same direction of Google's, their mobile version dropped support for extensions, was it really C++ Firefox problem? I must say I dislike Brendan Eich as individual and for his political views, but when he was CEO of Mozilla, Mozilla was much better at making software for the Internet.

ReactiveJelly 6y ago

Some people seem to think Mozilla gets royalties every time you invoke rustc. And that if I just took off my rose-tinted glasses, I'd realize my Rust code is buggy, unsafe, slow, and hard to maintain, and the only reason I'm using Rust is because of hype. It was pretty hyped when I started using it, in 2015.

chinesempire 6y ago
> And that if I just took off my rose-tinted glasses, I'd realize my Rust code is buggy, unsafe, slow, and hard to maintain I didn't get the impression. I understood that Firefox talks about their success in rewriting in Rust because it's their language, they control it and are the major sponsor and user. I don't think Google or MS or any other company heavily involved in crafting programming languages for their own purposes will ever go that route for some of their core software, because they can't control the language and if they tried they would get the blame for trying.
- steveklabnik 6y ago
  Mozilla does not control Rust. Google and Microsoft are both already using Rust for real products.
  - chinesempire 6y ago
    Not core. There will never be Rust in Chrome or in Office. Mozilla controls Rust because it's the largest Rust user. Just like Google controls Go, even though it's opensource. You said it yourself "the only real way to get a job working on Rust was to work at Mozilla"
    - steveklabnik 6y ago
      > There will never be Rust in Chrome There is a branch in the repository right now trying it out. Rust is also used in ChromeOS. > Mozilla controls Rust because it's the largest Rust user. Mozilla is not the largest Rust user, nor does the largest user control the language. Governance is consensus-based, and anyone is eligible to join. > You said it yourself "the only real way to get a job working on Rust was to work at Mozilla" I may have said that a long, long time ago, but it's not true today. The Rust team at Mozilla has been shrinking, and other companies have been letting folks work on Rust as part of their job. And volunteers are like, 10x-25x more numerous than people who are paid to do so.
      - chinesempire 6y ago
        > There is a branch in the repository right now trying it out. Rust is also used in ChromeOS. ChromeOS is a dead product. > Mozilla is not the largest Rust user Who is then? > Governance is consensus-based, and anyone is eligible to join. Same thing Google says about Go. If Google is really interested in Rust I don't believe they will let the community keep the governance, I might be wrong, but better safe than sorry. Is Google trying to take control over Rust?
        steveklabnik 6y ago
        It's really clear that no matter what evidence I provide, you're going to dismiss it, so I just won't bother anymore.
        chinesempire 6y ago
        It's called a discussion. You're not even aknowledging the fact that there could be different opinions on the matter, if I was you I wouldn't play the card "you're dismissing evidence". You work on Rust, that's a fact, I'm giving you credit for it. Can you say it doesn't affect your judgement at all?
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      Rust is now an official UWP / WinUI binding, part of Project Reunion, core Windows platform, and is shipping on Visual Studio Code and Azure IoT products. Office will eventually make use of it.

lostjohnny 6y ago

> So the statement "Firefox is also the entity that invented Rust" kind of misses the point. The point is that Rust improved Firefox codebase, but that only speaks about Firefox ability to write code in C/C++, Firefox has improved as a browser, but who can prove it is because of Rust or because their legacy code base was shit in the first place? Chrome stole their market shares overnight and it's still a better browser, the reason to use Firefox over Chrome are only ethical and political. And I do use Firefox over Chrome, always did, even when Firefox was the slowest in the bunch and could literally kill the battery on my MBP while Chrome literally flied on it, I did when Firefox was named Firebird, I did when it was named Phoenix, when it was Mozilla and Netscape before that - I still own a Netscape 3 gold license. And even that edge is slowing disappearing. They recently deleted one of my extension because Google pressured them to, I couldn't reach any human technical support, they didn't explain why they did it, except for the Google notice, the extension had only a few hundreds users and it just displayed some content hidden in the page with CSS. Their policy towards extensions is rapidly going in the same direction of Google's, their mobile version dropped support for extensions, was it really C++ Firefox problem? I must say I dislike Brendan Eich as individual and for his political views, but when he was CEO of Mozilla, Mozilla was much better at making software for the Internet.