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I heard that when Cloudbleed happened, Cloudflare CTO declared that there will be no more new projects in C or C++, and that's how it happened. Needless to say,

I heard that when Cloudbleed happened, Cloudflare CTO declared that there will be no more new projects in C or C++, and that's how it happened. Needless to say, lots of time and money were wasted.

pornel 3y ago
Before Rust, most features had to be built on top of nginx, and had to carefully balance performance overhead of Lua (openresty) vs risks and maintenance costs of C modules or patching nginx itself. The switch to Rust has been very positive overall, because it allowed Cloudflare to tackle much more ambitious projects, and own its entire stack.
pas 3y ago
> Needless to say, lots of time and money were wasted. it might be needless, but for those of us not in the know, could you elaborate on that please? what ended up as waste? why? altogether was it worth it?
- diarrhea 3y ago
  This person seems to be a Rust contributor, so if this isn't a jab against Rust, I'm not sure what their point is.
- sanxiyn 3y ago
  These kinds of top down directives are almost always wasteful, because they ignore local situations. It could have been case by case decisions, considering cost and benefit. Now I understand why this is politically difficult, but it still resulted in suboptimal technical decisions, and ill will against Rust, which is unfortunate.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - rapsey 3y ago
    I would imagine cloudbleed shook the company severely. I doubt the decision to abandon C/C++ caused a lot of ill will within the company. Considering the level of exposure Cloudflare software has, it is I think a very level headed decision.
    - sanxiyn 3y ago
      Decision to abandon C/C++ is okay I would say. Decision to abandon C/C++ immediately is less so.
      - phicoh 3y ago
        It is my impression (as an outsider watching CF) that they have a bit of a not-invented-here problem. So if CF already has a culture of rewriting things, then rewriting it in Rust is not such a bad idea. The problem is more that rewriting code that has a long history and is in wide-spread use tends to lose that history and any real world experience embedded in the code. But if otherwise they would have written something in C++ then that point is moot.
        pas 3y ago
        can you point to something they could use but instead wrote their own for no good reason?
  - pas 3y ago
    sorry, but for me this is still heavily [citation needed] sure CTO says something, but what exactly happened? do we know? you wrote that no new C/C++ projects were started. that to me sounds perfectly reasonable phase-out.
_joel 3y ago
No.
sophacles 3y ago
Do you have any evidence for any of the parts of your statement? Those are some big claims and some evidence is warranted - rumors can say just about anything and usually are far from the full truth (and often completely false).
- sanxiyn 3y ago
  https://lobste.rs/s/0akqy7#c_ihruks https://lobste.rs/s/0akqy7#c_ihruks
  - uo21tp5hoyg 3y ago
    > I was right: it was a risk, and it did slow us down. However, by being forced to use Rust, we ended up with a better design that was safer and easier to debug, and it was just as fast as the C++ equivalent. In the long run, it was a massive win. We’re all in love with Rust now, and 5 years later we’ve replaced nearly all of our non-Rust code (mostly Go) with faster, safer, and better-architected Rust equivalents. Seems like a win?

I heard that when Cloudbleed happened, Cloudflare CTO declared that there will be no more new projects in C or C++, and that's how it happened. Needless to say, lots of time and money were wasted.

pornel 3y ago

Before Rust, most features had to be built on top of nginx, and had to carefully balance performance overhead of Lua (openresty) vs risks and maintenance costs of C modules or patching nginx itself. The switch to Rust has been very positive overall, because it allowed Cloudflare to tackle much more ambitious projects, and own its entire stack.

pas 3y ago

> Needless to say, lots of time and money were wasted. it might be needless, but for those of us not in the know, could you elaborate on that please? what ended up as waste? why? altogether was it worth it?

diarrhea 3y ago
This person seems to be a Rust contributor, so if this isn't a jab against Rust, I'm not sure what their point is.
sanxiyn 3y ago
These kinds of top down directives are almost always wasteful, because they ignore local situations. It could have been case by case decisions, considering cost and benefit. Now I understand why this is politically difficult, but it still resulted in suboptimal technical decisions, and ill will against Rust, which is unfortunate.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- rapsey 3y ago
  I would imagine cloudbleed shook the company severely. I doubt the decision to abandon C/C++ caused a lot of ill will within the company. Considering the level of exposure Cloudflare software has, it is I think a very level headed decision.
  - sanxiyn 3y ago
    Decision to abandon C/C++ is okay I would say. Decision to abandon C/C++ immediately is less so.
    - phicoh 3y ago
      It is my impression (as an outsider watching CF) that they have a bit of a not-invented-here problem. So if CF already has a culture of rewriting things, then rewriting it in Rust is not such a bad idea. The problem is more that rewriting code that has a long history and is in wide-spread use tends to lose that history and any real world experience embedded in the code. But if otherwise they would have written something in C++ then that point is moot.
      - pas 3y ago
        can you point to something they could use but instead wrote their own for no good reason?
- pas 3y ago
  sorry, but for me this is still heavily [citation needed] sure CTO says something, but what exactly happened? do we know? you wrote that no new C/C++ projects were started. that to me sounds perfectly reasonable phase-out.

_joel 3y ago

No.

sophacles 3y ago

Do you have any evidence for any of the parts of your statement? Those are some big claims and some evidence is warranted - rumors can say just about anything and usually are far from the full truth (and often completely false).

sanxiyn 3y ago
https://lobste.rs/s/0akqy7#c_ihruks https://lobste.rs/s/0akqy7#c_ihruks
- uo21tp5hoyg 3y ago
  > I was right: it was a risk, and it did slow us down. However, by being forced to use Rust, we ended up with a better design that was safer and easier to debug, and it was just as fast as the C++ equivalent. In the long run, it was a massive win. We’re all in love with Rust now, and 5 years later we’ve replaced nearly all of our non-Rust code (mostly Go) with faster, safer, and better-architected Rust equivalents. Seems like a win?