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When you are coding in Rust for tiny MCU sooner or later you would code some functions in assembler or in unsafe Rust. At this point Rust does not provide much

by lr1970 4y ago

When you are coding in Rust for tiny MCU sooner or later you would code some functions in assembler or in unsafe Rust. At this point Rust does not provide much of the advantages over Zig as far as safety guarantees are concerned. Lightweight Zig seems to fit this space better that heavy Rust.

rowanG077 4y ago
Besides the CTE and Cross compiling, what is objectively better in Zig then in Rust? Just the Rust ecosystem would sway me towards it honestly instead of something esotoric like Zig. Writing unsafe Rust is not really a problem I have.
- kuon 4y ago
  Well, I am not saying it is better objectively, but for my uses it was easier. I wrote a firmware in rust and I rewrote it in zig as my first real world exercice, I ended up with 90% less code. Rust has really great abstraction and I like it, but for some things it is overkill. In zig I didn't need much of the abstraction because I did not have to make the borrow checker happy. In rust you have to structure your code in a way each part of it will have access to what it needs. In zig you just access it, as a global if needed. And sometimes the ability that zig code have to fit in memory (mine) is a real productivity boost.
throwaway81523 4y ago
Small MCU programming usually doesn't use dynamic memory allocation at all. Does Rust bring borrowing into play in any other situations? I don't know anything about Zig and should probably look into it, but I think Ada is underrated for MCU's.
- steveklabnik 4y ago
  Yes. Borrow checking is unrelated to dynamic memory allocation. The borrow checker checks that references point to valid memory. The location of that memory is not relevant. Also, Rust is more than a borrow checker. My day job is working on an embedded system that has zero dynamic allocation, and Rust’s other features are still very valuable to us, independent of the borrow checker (which also does bring value, to be clear.)

by lr1970 4y ago

rowanG077 4y ago

Besides the CTE and Cross compiling, what is objectively better in Zig then in Rust? Just the Rust ecosystem would sway me towards it honestly instead of something esotoric like Zig. Writing unsafe Rust is not really a problem I have.

kuon 4y ago
Well, I am not saying it is better objectively, but for my uses it was easier. I wrote a firmware in rust and I rewrote it in zig as my first real world exercice, I ended up with 90% less code. Rust has really great abstraction and I like it, but for some things it is overkill. In zig I didn't need much of the abstraction because I did not have to make the borrow checker happy. In rust you have to structure your code in a way each part of it will have access to what it needs. In zig you just access it, as a global if needed. And sometimes the ability that zig code have to fit in memory (mine) is a real productivity boost.

throwaway81523 4y ago

Small MCU programming usually doesn't use dynamic memory allocation at all. Does Rust bring borrowing into play in any other situations? I don't know anything about Zig and should probably look into it, but I think Ada is underrated for MCU's.

steveklabnik 4y ago
Yes. Borrow checking is unrelated to dynamic memory allocation. The borrow checker checks that references point to valid memory. The location of that memory is not relevant. Also, Rust is more than a borrow checker. My day job is working on an embedded system that has zero dynamic allocation, and Rust’s other features are still very valuable to us, independent of the borrow checker (which also does bring value, to be clear.)