4 ms·

Still, C is far more enjoyable to write than Rust is. Constantly fighting with your compiler is not how I would imagine a good time.

c-cube 4y ago
Clearly that's a matter of taste. The popularity of rust shows that some people prefer writing it to writing C or C++, otherwise they'd just write C or C++. And yeah, personally I'd rather spend time fixing compile time errors, directly in the editor as I type, than hunting segfaults with gdb later.
- torstenvl 4y ago
  Personally — and I know this isn't a good philosophy for secure software, I'm just commenting purely on the enjoyability aspect — I much prefer the logic game of hunting memory errors over the frustration of one of my tools refusing to do what I'm telling it to do. (Like Brian Kernighan, I usually use judicious printf()s rather than gdb or lldb.)
jcranmer 4y ago
I care to disagree. I'd much rather fight with my compiler than play the game of "oops, I segfaulted, let me recompile with -g so I can rerun with gdb so I can figure out where I crashed." Or more minor stuff, like trying to track down which header file actually contains the implementation of, say, struct mcontext_t so I can remember how to set the value of RSP in a signal handler. I've grown to enjoy the Rust programming far more. Having a language, and associated tooling, that's woken up to the 21st century is far more enjoyable. (Really, why is it acceptable that a major language in 2023 still defaults to providing absolutely no diagnostic information on a fault?)
Gigachad 4y ago
Fighting with the compiler just means you have the wrong frame of thinking. Once you learn how to express things in ways that are verifiably safe, there is no fighting because you’ll get it mostly correct the first time.
- eggy 4y ago
  I agree, but I think you should then look at SPARK2014 [1]. Rust just has better marketing and a bigger company behind it, but SPARK2014 is simpler and has been delivering Rust's bullet list for almost 10 years. [1] https://www.adacore.com/about-spark https://www.adacore.com/about-spark
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Why on earth did they add 2014 to the name? It’s like putting an expiry date on it before it even takes off.
    - eggy 4y ago
      It is more a version thing, and I always put it in the name to differentiate from Apache's Spark. That and the all-uppercase letters.

c-cube 4y ago

Clearly that's a matter of taste. The popularity of rust shows that some people prefer writing it to writing C or C++, otherwise they'd just write C or C++. And yeah, personally I'd rather spend time fixing compile time errors, directly in the editor as I type, than hunting segfaults with gdb later.

torstenvl 4y ago
Personally — and I know this isn't a good philosophy for secure software, I'm just commenting purely on the enjoyability aspect — I much prefer the logic game of hunting memory errors over the frustration of one of my tools refusing to do what I'm telling it to do. (Like Brian Kernighan, I usually use judicious printf()s rather than gdb or lldb.)

jcranmer 4y ago

I care to disagree. I'd much rather fight with my compiler than play the game of "oops, I segfaulted, let me recompile with -g so I can rerun with gdb so I can figure out where I crashed." Or more minor stuff, like trying to track down which header file actually contains the implementation of, say, struct mcontext_t so I can remember how to set the value of RSP in a signal handler. I've grown to enjoy the Rust programming far more. Having a language, and associated tooling, that's woken up to the 21st century is far more enjoyable. (Really, why is it acceptable that a major language in 2023 still defaults to providing absolutely no diagnostic information on a fault?)

Gigachad 4y ago

Fighting with the compiler just means you have the wrong frame of thinking. Once you learn how to express things in ways that are verifiably safe, there is no fighting because you’ll get it mostly correct the first time.

eggy 4y ago
I agree, but I think you should then look at SPARK2014 [1]. Rust just has better marketing and a bigger company behind it, but SPARK2014 is simpler and has been delivering Rust's bullet list for almost 10 years. [1] https://www.adacore.com/about-spark https://www.adacore.com/about-spark
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Why on earth did they add 2014 to the name? It’s like putting an expiry date on it before it even takes off.
  - eggy 4y ago
    It is more a version thing, and I always put it in the name to differentiate from Apache's Spark. That and the all-uppercase letters.