5 ms·

> Third: There are a lot of cases where the cost of memory safety just isn't that high, and Zig's mitigations are more than sufficient. But then why not just u

> Third: There are a lot of cases where the cost of memory safety just isn't that high, and Zig's mitigations are more than sufficient. But then why not just use a GC'd language? It isn't 1995 anymore; most apps are written in GC'd languages. C++ makes sense when you already have a lot of C++ code, but if you're talking about new code, I don't see a lot of room for a language without memory safety.

verdagon 4y ago
That was a typo, supposed to say "memory unsafety". Thanks for catching that, edited now.
cztomsik 4y ago
for native addons for GC'd languages you probably don't want to introduce another GC, rust is not well-suited for interfacing with FFI, C++ is a bit heavyweight but okish I guess and C is totally unsafe, Zig is just right.
- pcwalton 4y ago
  > rust is not well-suited for interfacing with FFI That's a surprising comment, given the massive deployments of hybrid Rust/C++ apps at huge scale that exist! Does Zig have any equivalent to cxx for interfacing with C++ code?
  - cztomsik 4y ago
    you are right about cxx, I made this comment with C FFI in mind. and for that, Zig couldn't have better integration. AFAIK there is no simple way to interface with C++ from Zig, you either have C headers or you write a bit of C++ to export what you need and then you're back in the game. Or you flip it on its head and use zig as C++ compiler and call your zig-parts from C++ but I have no experience with this, I think bun does this.
- mwcampbell 4y ago
  > rust is not well-suited for interfacing with FFI How so? Packages like neon [1] and rustler [2] suggest otherwise. I'm using both of those in a real product (I'm using neon directly, to write native modules for an Electron app; on the back-end, I depend on an Elixir package that uses rustler). [1]: https://github.com/neon-bindings/neon https://github.com/neon-bindings/neon [2]: https://github.com/rusterlium/rustler https://github.com/rusterlium/rustler
  - cztomsik 4y ago
    I admit it's a long time since I've been using neon so things might have changed but at the time I had a feeling that the whole thing is very fragile and not really safer than if I was using pointers directly. Especially, if you callback into JS and that calls back to native then I think you don't have any guarantees from rust anymore (aka you are being lied) because compiler cannot not know about that. Also builds were a bit tricky, it needed node.js headers in proper place, etc. In zig you just include napi.h because zig can import C including macros and everything. Or if you need to call glfw/nanovg/stb/xxx you just @cImport() and it works. Zig also supports C-style strings in a better way and I can't recall all of the obstacles right now but I'm way way more productive with Zig after 1 month than I was with rust after 5ys.
mwcampbell 4y ago
> But then why not just use a GC'd language? It isn't 1995 anymore; most apps are written in GC'd languages. I mostly agree with you, and I'm enthusiastically using Rust. But I'd love to be able to develop new software, with modern developer conveniences, that could run on a 1995 computer. Assuming that implies a 32-bit OS, that seems plausible with Rust, albeit not with std (but alloc should be fine). Maybe I'll play with that for a side project sometime.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  Rust has already been made to compile stuff for 1995 systems, if only as an experiment: https://seri.tools/blog/announcing-rust9x/ https://seri.tools/blog/announcing-rust9x/ / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31112273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31112273
- pjmlp 4y ago
  That includes GC languages like C#. https://medium.com/@MStrehovsky/building-a-self-contained-game-in-c-under-8-kilobytes-74c3cf60ea04 https://medium.com/@MStrehovsky/building-a-self-contained-ga...

verdagon 4y ago

That was a typo, supposed to say "memory unsafety". Thanks for catching that, edited now.

cztomsik 4y ago

for native addons for GC'd languages you probably don't want to introduce another GC, rust is not well-suited for interfacing with FFI, C++ is a bit heavyweight but okish I guess and C is totally unsafe, Zig is just right.

pcwalton 4y ago
> rust is not well-suited for interfacing with FFI That's a surprising comment, given the massive deployments of hybrid Rust/C++ apps at huge scale that exist! Does Zig have any equivalent to cxx for interfacing with C++ code?
- cztomsik 4y ago
  you are right about cxx, I made this comment with C FFI in mind. and for that, Zig couldn't have better integration. AFAIK there is no simple way to interface with C++ from Zig, you either have C headers or you write a bit of C++ to export what you need and then you're back in the game. Or you flip it on its head and use zig as C++ compiler and call your zig-parts from C++ but I have no experience with this, I think bun does this.
mwcampbell 4y ago
> rust is not well-suited for interfacing with FFI How so? Packages like neon [1] and rustler [2] suggest otherwise. I'm using both of those in a real product (I'm using neon directly, to write native modules for an Electron app; on the back-end, I depend on an Elixir package that uses rustler). [1]: https://github.com/neon-bindings/neon https://github.com/neon-bindings/neon [2]: https://github.com/rusterlium/rustler https://github.com/rusterlium/rustler
- cztomsik 4y ago
  I admit it's a long time since I've been using neon so things might have changed but at the time I had a feeling that the whole thing is very fragile and not really safer than if I was using pointers directly. Especially, if you callback into JS and that calls back to native then I think you don't have any guarantees from rust anymore (aka you are being lied) because compiler cannot not know about that. Also builds were a bit tricky, it needed node.js headers in proper place, etc. In zig you just include napi.h because zig can import C including macros and everything. Or if you need to call glfw/nanovg/stb/xxx you just @cImport() and it works. Zig also supports C-style strings in a better way and I can't recall all of the obstacles right now but I'm way way more productive with Zig after 1 month than I was with rust after 5ys.

mwcampbell 4y ago

> But then why not just use a GC'd language? It isn't 1995 anymore; most apps are written in GC'd languages. I mostly agree with you, and I'm enthusiastically using Rust. But I'd love to be able to develop new software, with modern developer conveniences, that could run on a 1995 computer. Assuming that implies a 32-bit OS, that seems plausible with Rust, albeit not with std (but alloc should be fine). Maybe I'll play with that for a side project sometime.

zozbot234 4y ago
Rust has already been made to compile stuff for 1995 systems, if only as an experiment: https://seri.tools/blog/announcing-rust9x/ https://seri.tools/blog/announcing-rust9x/ / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31112273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31112273
pjmlp 4y ago
That includes GC languages like C#. https://medium.com/@MStrehovsky/building-a-self-contained-game-in-c-under-8-kilobytes-74c3cf60ea04 https://medium.com/@MStrehovsky/building-a-self-contained-ga...