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> Do you feel so threatened by people creating new programming languages? that's a lot of assumptions. I never even said I write C code. It feels to me that

> Do you feel so threatened by people creating new programming languages? that's a lot of assumptions. I never even said I write C code. It feels to me that you are projecting your doubts on me to validate your choices. I have absolutely no problem at all with programming languages, in fact I always try all the new ones I can, I can actually write code, with very different degrees of competence, in more than 30 of them, including Rust, my new language of choice to write NIF extensions for Erlang/Elixir. Thanks to rustler crate which is awesome. > While some "innovation" actually make things worse I see a lot of interesting ideas coming from both Rust and Zig. Never said the opposite though. Just that a C Ruby extension is not the same thing of "writing a browser at Google in C++" > He used Zig, not Rust. I was referring to this sentence he wrote Other options were not great as well. I can use Rust, but I have never been on good terms with Rust

masklinn 4y ago
> Just that a C Ruby extension is not the same thing of "writing a browser at Google in C++" True. It's, if anything, worse: the users of the extension might not even know it's native, will definitely assume it's fully safe, and will absolutely feed it attacker-controlled data without a thought. And the extension author won't have the engineering review and tooling that a Google has in place either.
- peoplefromibiza 4y ago
  > True. It's, if anything, worse: Ruby extensions in C (or any other language) are mostly - 100% of the time for non-trivial stuff - a thin layer wrapping a native library. The attack surface is minimal and it's almost entirely in the realm of the library code, which usually the extension developer has no control over. it is also much easier to sandbox a ruby process in a server than Chrome on the user's computer. > the engineering review and tooling that a Google has in place either hardly, I would argue that something that is hundreds of thousand times smaller in scope and number of lines of code is much easier to write, review, test and debug. Chrome seats at 7 million LoC, the average Ruby extension is ~100 LoC. The fact that writing a wrapper is trivial compared to writing a browser, also helps a lot. Many people can write a bug free correct wrapper in any language using only their brain. No one can write Google Chrome on their own, let alone a bug free correct implementation of it. Premature optimization is the root of all evil. “Omnia venenum sunt: nec sine veneno quicquam existit. Dosis sola facit, ut venenum non fit.”

masklinn 4y ago

> Just that a C Ruby extension is not the same thing of "writing a browser at Google in C++" True. It's, if anything, worse: the users of the extension might not even know it's native, will definitely assume it's fully safe, and will absolutely feed it attacker-controlled data without a thought. And the extension author won't have the engineering review and tooling that a Google has in place either.

peoplefromibiza 4y ago
> True. It's, if anything, worse: Ruby extensions in C (or any other language) are mostly - 100% of the time for non-trivial stuff - a thin layer wrapping a native library. The attack surface is minimal and it's almost entirely in the realm of the library code, which usually the extension developer has no control over. it is also much easier to sandbox a ruby process in a server than Chrome on the user's computer. > the engineering review and tooling that a Google has in place either hardly, I would argue that something that is hundreds of thousand times smaller in scope and number of lines of code is much easier to write, review, test and debug. Chrome seats at 7 million LoC, the average Ruby extension is ~100 LoC. The fact that writing a wrapper is trivial compared to writing a browser, also helps a lot. Many people can write a bug free correct wrapper in any language using only their brain. No one can write Google Chrome on their own, let alone a bug free correct implementation of it. Premature optimization is the root of all evil. “Omnia venenum sunt: nec sine veneno quicquam existit. Dosis sola facit, ut venenum non fit.”