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Both SPARK and Rust provide memory safety, so it's perfectly reasonable to use popularity as a "tie breaker". Applications are written by people; the more peopl
by pcwalton 3y ago
Both SPARK and Rust provide memory safety, so it's perfectly reasonable to use popularity as a "tie breaker". Applications are written by people; the more people who can usefully contribute, the more work can be done.
- 0xfedbee 3y agoWhat’s your source saying more people write Rust than Ada? There are people outside HN.
- anp 3y agoThe TIOBE index’s[0] methodology is definitely flawed but it currently lists Rust at 19 and Ada at 22. No mention of SPARK. [0] https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/
- michaelmrose 3y agoIf you use a flawed metric that measures nothing of note noting relative position is not illuminating.
- mustache_kimono 3y ago> What’s your source saying more people write Rust than Ada? I think this "popularity" reasoning is flawed. It completely misses the context of the tool. Just ask yourself -- are there many UNIX CLI tools written in Ada/SPARK? I'm sure there are some, but not aware of any I use regularly. Meanwhile, there is a Cambrian explosion of Rust CLI tools taking place. "Popularity" is really a surrogate for "popular, accessible, infrastructure for an OSS CLI tool for UNIX", a place where Ada AFAIK has not been a first choice. If we were building firmware for a missile guidance computer, maybe the reasoning would be different? But it's still not a sufficient reason, so I'll add another: People really like using Rust to make these types of tools. It's amazing to me that people are so willing to discount as non-technical, and therefore unworthy of discussion, lots of people really like using Rust.
- pcwalton 3y agoIn my other comment I wrote "open source ecosystem" in order to avoid all the speculation about how much SPARK is used in commercial avionics and whatnot.
- ratmice 3y agoSeems obvious to me that ease of installation seems also is a factor where popularity can have an impact. If one is more popular that increases the likely hood that users will already be familiar with installation methods (ignoring actual difficulty), reaching more people in the process.
- csb6 3y agoSPARK goes further though. More advanced properties besides memory safety can be proven. This seems tremendously useful for something like sudo.