6 ms·

Momentum counts, and Ada/Spark have little mindshare right now. If next to nobody ever adopted them in the last two decades unless mandated by requirements, wha

Momentum counts, and Ada/Spark have little mindshare right now. If next to nobody ever adopted them in the last two decades unless mandated by requirements, what chance do they have for the near future? For whatever reason, Rust is surging in popularity and is currently the most promising bet for memory safety to become commonplace in the system programming circles.

Rochus 6y ago
Rust is the new utopia; at the moment there is only the (founded) assumption that you write more secure software with it. Only time will tell whether this is actually the case and whether the same number of security problems will be displayed in Rust applications in ten years' time. But as is well known, hope is nourished by promises of salvation.
- staticassertion 6y ago
  The problem with this attitude is: * The claims aren't baseless. We've seen for decades already that memory safe languages have fewer memory safety issues than languages that are not memory safe. * Asking for hard proof is silly in software. There's tons of research into programming languages and their impact on software projects, across a number of areas, and it's all fairly useless - it's extremely expensive to do right, and impossible to objectively measure. Common sense isn't propaganda.
  - Rochus 6y ago
    > that memory safe languages have fewer memory safety issues than languages That's what I would assume ;-) By the end of the day it's also a question of performance. For embedded, realtime or mobile core technologies there will always be a need to shortcut. > Asking for hard proof is silly in software. Not only in software. That's what the scientific method is for. That needs time. Currently there is a debate whether the switch from Ada to C++ for the F-35 is the cause of all the observed problems and budget overruns. There is still not enough data to know. But there was a decade-long track record for Ada in avionics. And C++ also had to establish itself for twenty years before anyone dared to develop an F-35 with it.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    > Asking for hard proof is silly in software. You can however prove that the language solves a particular attack ;)
    - Rochus 6y ago
      Do you have a reference where this has been done with Ada/Spark?
- usrusr 6y ago
  There's a second story to Rust appeal: not just systems people hoping to gain safety rails previously only enjoyed by high-level programmers, but also applications programmers hoping to gain some low-level capability without losing safety rails. The former is far more important, but the latter is driving much of the public love for Rust (there simply aren't that many systems programmers out there)

Rochus 6y ago

Rust is the new utopia; at the moment there is only the (founded) assumption that you write more secure software with it. Only time will tell whether this is actually the case and whether the same number of security problems will be displayed in Rust applications in ten years' time. But as is well known, hope is nourished by promises of salvation.

staticassertion 6y ago
The problem with this attitude is: * The claims aren't baseless. We've seen for decades already that memory safe languages have fewer memory safety issues than languages that are not memory safe. * Asking for hard proof is silly in software. There's tons of research into programming languages and their impact on software projects, across a number of areas, and it's all fairly useless - it's extremely expensive to do right, and impossible to objectively measure. Common sense isn't propaganda.
- Rochus 6y ago
  > that memory safe languages have fewer memory safety issues than languages That's what I would assume ;-) By the end of the day it's also a question of performance. For embedded, realtime or mobile core technologies there will always be a need to shortcut. > Asking for hard proof is silly in software. Not only in software. That's what the scientific method is for. That needs time. Currently there is a debate whether the switch from Ada to C++ for the F-35 is the cause of all the observed problems and budget overruns. There is still not enough data to know. But there was a decade-long track record for Ada in avionics. And C++ also had to establish itself for twenty years before anyone dared to develop an F-35 with it.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  > Asking for hard proof is silly in software. You can however prove that the language solves a particular attack ;)
  - Rochus 6y ago
    Do you have a reference where this has been done with Ada/Spark?
usrusr 6y ago
There's a second story to Rust appeal: not just systems people hoping to gain safety rails previously only enjoyed by high-level programmers, but also applications programmers hoping to gain some low-level capability without losing safety rails. The former is far more important, but the latter is driving much of the public love for Rust (there simply aren't that many systems programmers out there)