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> I’m not sure about that: there’s been a few people vocally complaining but it doesn’t seem like they’re getting much traction. You don't see the problem with

> I’m not sure about that: there’s been a few people vocally complaining but it doesn’t seem like they’re getting much traction. You don't see the problem with that? People (who already use a memory-safe language!) shouldn't be complaining when their crypto gets rewritten in a memory-safe language. If they are, someone shat the bed. And if your users are complaining but getting no traction, that is a (second!) shitting of the bed. > other maintainers saying “people using hardware which has been dying since the 90s aren’t a major constituency and I’d like the huge safety and productivity benefits of Rust”. We all want safe software. People aren't upset by choices being added, they are upset about something they (thought) they had that has now been taken away. If you break a bunch of people's stuff and then tell them "fuck you, pay us" or "your platform isn't hip enough" it's kind of a dick move, eh? The "optics" are bad. - - - - In re: complexity of Rust vs. C: The measure of complexity of a system isn't the ergonomics of the tooling, it's the time/effort for a newbie to achieve competence, eh?

acdha 6y ago
> People (who already use a memory-safe language!) shouldn't be complaining when their crypto gets rewritten in a memory-safe language. If they are, someone shat the bed. Or they’re resistant to change and are going to complain about anything which means they have to learn something new. I mean, if you listened to the current crop you’d think that C builds worked perfectly everywhere whereas it hasn’t even been a week since I’ve to debug a C-based extension install on an Alpine container. In reality, a large fraction of Python cryptography users switched without issues. They just didn’t take to the forums to say that it was working fine or that they were not unhappy because they didn’t derive some portion of their self image from mastery of a half century-old systems programming language. > In re: complexity of Rust vs. C: The measure of complexity of a system isn't the ergonomics of the tooling, it's the time/effort for a newbie to achieve competence, eh? I’d really seriously question whether it’s correct to assume that it’s easier to learn C plus 50 years of add-on libraries to get close to Rust-level functionality and internalizing all of the patterns people use to work around the unsafe and/or unfixable bits. That Rust newcomer will almost certainly have multithreaded code working safely while their C counterpart is acquiring some deep debugging experience. The higher level structures are a huge win and the frictional cost of not having core language support for basic tasks like text processing mean a lot of frictional costs go from being easily missed runtime mistakes or hard to debug crashes to IDE warnings or compile time errors.
- carapace 6y ago
  > That Rust newcomer will almost certainly have multithreaded code working safely while their C counterpart is acquiring some deep debugging experience. Yep. Which one will be better at debugging when things inevitably go wrong? The happy path is not the measure of complexity. Let me put it another way: Which would be simpler to implement from scratch, C or Rust?
  - acdha 6y ago
    > Yep. Which one will be better at debugging when things inevitably go wrong? I think you're dramatically under-estimating the amount of extra work a C developer has to do, ranging from not having many data structures to not having a package manager and thus needing to write a lot more code themselves. If C forced developers to be good at debugging we'd know by now — and I'd see less printf() debugging — and being forced to cobble together more of what you get out of the box with Rust means that those skills are less portable because different programs have different combinations of conventions, macros, and libraries in use. A C developer with a lot of Windows experience is going to have a rougher time debugging a Linux program (repeat for MacOS, iOS, *BSD, etc.) than a Rust developer simply because the limited language set means even basic tasks like text processing follow project-specific conventions.
    - carapace 6y ago
      Rust is more complex than C. It's not a controversial statement. You're arguing past that, saying that Rust is more ergonomic, or has more built-in functionality, or is more cross-platform, or has one true package manager, etc. All of that may be true but it doesn't make Rust simpler than C. In any event, if Rust wants to take over the world but disdains "weird architectures" or "dying" hardware, well, we'll see how that plays out for them. I hope we do get safer software one way or another, so I wish the Rust folks well. That's why I'm pointing out that this is lousy politicking. I'm not trying to hate Rust.
      - acdha 6y ago
mlindner 6y ago
> The measure of complexity of a system isn't the ergonomics of the tooling, it's the time/effort for a newbie to achieve competence, eh? Honestly it takes a very very long time to become competent in C. I do C for my day job (or rather did until recently) and I still don't call myself competent in the language. There are so many intricacies that can bite you and you're constantly learning it. I used to love C, now I hate it.

acdha 6y ago

> People (who already use a memory-safe language!) shouldn't be complaining when their crypto gets rewritten in a memory-safe language. If they are, someone shat the bed. Or they’re resistant to change and are going to complain about anything which means they have to learn something new. I mean, if you listened to the current crop you’d think that C builds worked perfectly everywhere whereas it hasn’t even been a week since I’ve to debug a C-based extension install on an Alpine container. In reality, a large fraction of Python cryptography users switched without issues. They just didn’t take to the forums to say that it was working fine or that they were not unhappy because they didn’t derive some portion of their self image from mastery of a half century-old systems programming language. > In re: complexity of Rust vs. C: The measure of complexity of a system isn't the ergonomics of the tooling, it's the time/effort for a newbie to achieve competence, eh? I’d really seriously question whether it’s correct to assume that it’s easier to learn C plus 50 years of add-on libraries to get close to Rust-level functionality and internalizing all of the patterns people use to work around the unsafe and/or unfixable bits. That Rust newcomer will almost certainly have multithreaded code working safely while their C counterpart is acquiring some deep debugging experience. The higher level structures are a huge win and the frictional cost of not having core language support for basic tasks like text processing mean a lot of frictional costs go from being easily missed runtime mistakes or hard to debug crashes to IDE warnings or compile time errors.

carapace 6y ago
> That Rust newcomer will almost certainly have multithreaded code working safely while their C counterpart is acquiring some deep debugging experience. Yep. Which one will be better at debugging when things inevitably go wrong? The happy path is not the measure of complexity. Let me put it another way: Which would be simpler to implement from scratch, C or Rust?
- acdha 6y ago
  > Yep. Which one will be better at debugging when things inevitably go wrong? I think you're dramatically under-estimating the amount of extra work a C developer has to do, ranging from not having many data structures to not having a package manager and thus needing to write a lot more code themselves. If C forced developers to be good at debugging we'd know by now — and I'd see less printf() debugging — and being forced to cobble together more of what you get out of the box with Rust means that those skills are less portable because different programs have different combinations of conventions, macros, and libraries in use. A C developer with a lot of Windows experience is going to have a rougher time debugging a Linux program (repeat for MacOS, iOS, *BSD, etc.) than a Rust developer simply because the limited language set means even basic tasks like text processing follow project-specific conventions.
  - carapace 6y ago
    Rust is more complex than C. It's not a controversial statement. You're arguing past that, saying that Rust is more ergonomic, or has more built-in functionality, or is more cross-platform, or has one true package manager, etc. All of that may be true but it doesn't make Rust simpler than C. In any event, if Rust wants to take over the world but disdains "weird architectures" or "dying" hardware, well, we'll see how that plays out for them. I hope we do get safer software one way or another, so I wish the Rust folks well. That's why I'm pointing out that this is lousy politicking. I'm not trying to hate Rust.
    - acdha 6y ago

mlindner 6y ago

> The measure of complexity of a system isn't the ergonomics of the tooling, it's the time/effort for a newbie to achieve competence, eh? Honestly it takes a very very long time to become competent in C. I do C for my day job (or rather did until recently) and I still don't call myself competent in the language. There are so many intricacies that can bite you and you're constantly learning it. I used to love C, now I hate it.