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Right, well, Cantrill was also bullish on Node.js of all things, somehow. I'm not sure I'd take a snapshot of a single moment of his ever-evolving advocacy to b

by caeril 6y ago

Right, well, Cantrill was also bullish on Node.js of all things, somehow. I'm not sure I'd take a snapshot of a single moment of his ever-evolving advocacy to be justification of what the current Right Thing(tm) is. That said, Oxide is definitely doing The Right Thing(tm) selecting Rust, since they explicitly NEED boot and system board firmware that A. Is fast native code and B. Is as close to semi-sorta-provably-secure as one can get. Rust fits that specific bill better than anything short of C/ASM and NASA-level code validation processes.

bcantrill 6y ago
Wow, tough crowd! I don't know that I -- or anyone that knows me -- would accuse me of "ever-evolving advocacy", but yes, I did see promise in node.js in 2010[1]. And yes, we at Joyent built systems on node.js -- but we also added unprecedented debuggability and observability along the way.[2]. While my views may not be "ever" evolving, they're also not incapable of it: by 2014, it was clear that node.js was diverging from my personal hopes for it -- that it was not going to become suitable for infrastructure software. While this was distressing at the time, I came to view this as a divergence in values -- a realization that I described at length in a talk in 2017.[3] To the matter at hand: yes, I have fallen in love with Rust.[4] Yes, I think it is a good fit for system software.[5] And yes, this has served as a bonding force at Oxide -- but as much (if not more!) for the values that it reflects than for it itself.[6] [1] http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2010/08/11/the-node-js-demographic/ http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2010/08/11/the-node-js-demograph... [2] http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2012/05/05/debugging-node-js-memory-leaks/ http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2012/05/05/debugging-node-js-mem... [3] https://vimeo.com/230142234 https://vimeo.com/230142234 [4] http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2018/09/18/falling-in-love-with-rust/ http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2018/09/18/falling-in-love-with-... [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgtRAbE1nBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgtRAbE1nBM [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ajos-0OWts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ajos-0OWts

by caeril 6y ago

bcantrill 6y ago

Wow, tough crowd! I don't know that I -- or anyone that knows me -- would accuse me of "ever-evolving advocacy", but yes, I did see promise in node.js in 2010[1]. And yes, we at Joyent built systems on node.js -- but we also added unprecedented debuggability and observability along the way.[2]. While my views may not be "ever" evolving, they're also not incapable of it: by 2014, it was clear that node.js was diverging from my personal hopes for it -- that it was not going to become suitable for infrastructure software. While this was distressing at the time, I came to view this as a divergence in values -- a realization that I described at length in a talk in 2017.[3] To the matter at hand: yes, I have fallen in love with Rust.[4] Yes, I think it is a good fit for system software.[5] And yes, this has served as a bonding force at Oxide -- but as much (if not more!) for the values that it reflects than for it itself.[6] [1] http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2010/08/11/the-node-js-demographic/ http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2010/08/11/the-node-js-demograph... [2] http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2012/05/05/debugging-node-js-memory-leaks/ http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2012/05/05/debugging-node-js-mem... [3] https://vimeo.com/230142234 https://vimeo.com/230142234 [4] http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2018/09/18/falling-in-love-with-rust/ http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2018/09/18/falling-in-love-with-... [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgtRAbE1nBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgtRAbE1nBM [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ajos-0OWts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ajos-0OWts