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> Where does your take come from? From this very discussion, for starters. > Everyone I've heard of proposing Rust for the Linux kernel does so almost exclusi
by nuerow 5y ago
> Where does your take come from?
From this very discussion, for starters.
> Everyone I've heard of proposing Rust for the Linux kernel does so almost exclusively by making the argument that Rust can create safe performant abstractions over unsafe code.
The whole point is that the same thing (creating safe abstractions over unsafe code) is what developers have been doing with C for close to half a century.
Therefore, there must be a value proposition regarding the use of Rust other than Safe Rust. I haven't heard one so far. In fact, I've read the exact opposite, such as compilers needing rewrites to accommodate that usecase.
Thus, with Safe Rust out of the table, what exactly is Rust's value proposition?
> This is a huge productivity boost for large complex projects, and a huge safety boost since these abstractions prevent a large set of security vulnerabilities, and these are the main reason I've seen people to use to introduce Rust into the Linux kernel.
I feel those baseless assertions require some supporting evidence. Is there actually any tangible and concrete evidence that Rust, specially Unsafe Rust, improves productivity and safety? I'd love to read about it.
- volta83 5y ago> The whole point is that the same thing (creating safe abstractions over unsafe code) is what developers have been doing with C for close to half a century. They have been trying to do this, but it doesn't work because C's support for this is very poor. Not even C++ managed to do this. Rust makes it easy to do this in a reliable and efficient way that is 100% guaranteed to work. > I feel those baseless assertions require some supporting evidence. Is there actually any tangible and concrete evidence that Rust, specially Unsafe Rust, improves productivity and safety? Yes, see: https://prev.rust-lang.org/en-US/whitepapers.html https://prev.rust-lang.org/en-US/whitepapers.html and https://www.rust-lang.org/production https://www.rust-lang.org/production , and well https://dl.acm.org/action/doSearch?AllField=Rust https://dl.acm.org/action/doSearch?AllField=Rust (there are a bunch of peer-reviewed papers there that show this, serve yourself).