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Do you think there's any potential for rust to gain a competitive advantage in safety critical systems? Or are the benefits too difficult to quantify? It seem

by ahepp 5y ago

Do you think there's any potential for rust to gain a competitive advantage in safety critical systems? Or are the benefits too difficult to quantify? It seems like if something along the lines of "MISRA C" (but requiring Rust) were to become an industry best practice, we might see the Rust ecosystem develop. However, automakers are some of the most conservative companies out there when it comes to tech, and I doubt they really care about safety or formal correctness as much as being able to slap a "MISRA" sticker on the code for liability reasons. It would have to be, decades I imagine, before there's any chance of rust becoming truly widespread in the embedded world. Universities would need to start teaching with it. People who know C and nothing else would need to retire. I agree that it's unlikely to be commercially viable at a large scale any time soon (unless you can find a handful of true believers for your team).

not_the_fda 5y ago
I see benefits of it, but I think its a hard sell. In aviation things need certified, you can buy off the shelf compilers, RTOSs, and libraries certified for aviation. Rust doesn't have any of that. Medical devices, maybe, but you still have the problem of finding talent. If you were to build a product on Rust, you would have trouble hiring people to maintain it over the lifecycle of the product. Its hard enough hiring C and C++ developers.
- couchand 5y ago
  Weirdly, it's already significantly easier to find Rust (or Rust-interested) developers these days than C/C++. If your main concern is being able to hire devs then Rust is a clear win. And don't sleep on Sealed Rust. They've surely got a hard road ahead, but there are some dedicated folks working on it.
  - dataangel 5y ago
    Yeah I call bullshit. By sheer numbers C/C++ programmers are much easier to find. Rust may improve your company's appeal to an interested programmer, but by the numbers C/C++ have incredibly greater supply.
  - ahepp 5y ago
    > Weirdly, it's already significantly easier to find Rust (or Rust-interested) developers these days than C/C++ How do you figure that? That seems highly counterintuitive.
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      If the job is not otherwise very attractive, mentioning Rust may bring more applicants than would otherwise have bothered.
DoingIsLearning 5y ago
> Do you think there's any potential for rust to gain a competitive advantage in safety critical systems? There already is a solution for heavily safety-critical systems and it's got 40 years of industry track record it's called Ada. [0] I don't mean to sound dismissive but there is such a treasure trouve of battle tested industry learned experience in the Ada standard, it really is worth learning and considering.[1] Ada has had four standards in almost four decades. For anyone in industry this pace is adequate and all of those standards were truly value adding without any disruption to legacy systems. This is not compatible with the pace at which most Systems and Backend Rust enthusiasts want to move forward. I don't believe the two end applications/motivations can be merged under a single language or ecosystem despite many similarities. [0] https://www.adacore.com/industries https://www.adacore.com/industries [1] http://www.ada-auth.org/standards/12rat/html/Rat12-TOC.html http://www.ada-auth.org/standards/12rat/html/Rat12-TOC.html
- dataangel 5y ago
  How do you go about learning Ada without working in aerospace or a defense contractor? I've never organically run into any software in my daily life or using OSS that it is written in it. I know some exists, but it seems to be an incredibly isolated island disconnected from any of the other major programming ecosystems: web, HPC, games, CRUD business apps, finance/trading, embedded (outside aerospace/defense) etc. I don't know of a single major project in any of those fields written in Ada. I work in finance and have interviewed hundreds of programmers working on systems moving billions of dollars around at this point and not once have any of them ever mentioned having worked with it. I am skeptical they have as much to learn from Ada as vice versa, since Ada seems cut off from the majority of brains.

by ahepp 5y ago

not_the_fda 5y ago

I see benefits of it, but I think its a hard sell. In aviation things need certified, you can buy off the shelf compilers, RTOSs, and libraries certified for aviation. Rust doesn't have any of that. Medical devices, maybe, but you still have the problem of finding talent. If you were to build a product on Rust, you would have trouble hiring people to maintain it over the lifecycle of the product. Its hard enough hiring C and C++ developers.

couchand 5y ago
Weirdly, it's already significantly easier to find Rust (or Rust-interested) developers these days than C/C++. If your main concern is being able to hire devs then Rust is a clear win. And don't sleep on Sealed Rust. They've surely got a hard road ahead, but there are some dedicated folks working on it.
- dataangel 5y ago
  Yeah I call bullshit. By sheer numbers C/C++ programmers are much easier to find. Rust may improve your company's appeal to an interested programmer, but by the numbers C/C++ have incredibly greater supply.
- ahepp 5y ago
  > Weirdly, it's already significantly easier to find Rust (or Rust-interested) developers these days than C/C++ How do you figure that? That seems highly counterintuitive.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    If the job is not otherwise very attractive, mentioning Rust may bring more applicants than would otherwise have bothered.

DoingIsLearning 5y ago

> Do you think there's any potential for rust to gain a competitive advantage in safety critical systems? There already is a solution for heavily safety-critical systems and it's got 40 years of industry track record it's called Ada. [0] I don't mean to sound dismissive but there is such a treasure trouve of battle tested industry learned experience in the Ada standard, it really is worth learning and considering.[1] Ada has had four standards in almost four decades. For anyone in industry this pace is adequate and all of those standards were truly value adding without any disruption to legacy systems. This is not compatible with the pace at which most Systems and Backend Rust enthusiasts want to move forward. I don't believe the two end applications/motivations can be merged under a single language or ecosystem despite many similarities. [0] https://www.adacore.com/industries https://www.adacore.com/industries [1] http://www.ada-auth.org/standards/12rat/html/Rat12-TOC.html http://www.ada-auth.org/standards/12rat/html/Rat12-TOC.html

dataangel 5y ago
How do you go about learning Ada without working in aerospace or a defense contractor? I've never organically run into any software in my daily life or using OSS that it is written in it. I know some exists, but it seems to be an incredibly isolated island disconnected from any of the other major programming ecosystems: web, HPC, games, CRUD business apps, finance/trading, embedded (outside aerospace/defense) etc. I don't know of a single major project in any of those fields written in Ada. I work in finance and have interviewed hundreds of programmers working on systems moving billions of dollars around at this point and not once have any of them ever mentioned having worked with it. I am skeptical they have as much to learn from Ada as vice versa, since Ada seems cut off from the majority of brains.