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There are long lasting bridges made of stone, concrete and in the right climates, even wood. Not to mention rope when it suits the purpose. Each material has i

There are long lasting bridges made of stone, concrete and in the right climates, even wood. Not to mention rope when it suits the purpose. Each material has its own qualities, which means its own pros and cons in a given context. This naive belief that there will be one language to rule them all (and is name is <fill-in-the-blank> ignores history and the world outside of programming in a rather silly way.

jancsika 2y ago
> There are long lasting bridges made of stone, concrete and in the right climates, even wood. Not to mention rope when it suits the purpose. I'd be fine with someone building a new browser out of stone, concrete, wood, or even rope. Just don't build it out of C/C++ because those languages aren't memory safe.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  Rust is a risk-reduction strategy. It is not a risk-elimination strategy. There are risk-reduction strategies one can follow with C++, which offer some fraction of the reduction that Rust does (opinions vary on the value of the fraction). Rust enforces risk-reduction strategies, which in some contexts may be of value all by itself. Language choice does not eliminate risks in software.
  - IshKebab 2y ago
    > opinions vary on the value of the fraction They don't really. It's been shown by many studies that 2/3 of security bugs are memory safety errors. That's the minimum that Rust can eliminate. It actually should eliminate more because it also has the strong type system and tree-ownership style that help reduce the chance of logic bugs unrelated to memory safety too (similar to Haskell and other very strongly typed languages). This is probably the biggest data set: https://security.googleblog.com/2024/09/eliminating-memory-safety-vulnerabilities-Android.html https://security.googleblog.com/2024/09/eliminating-memory-s... Unfortunately they don't break out non-memory safety vulnerabilities, but they've almost eliminated memory safety vulnerabilities by writing new code in Rust.
IshKebab 2y ago
Nobody is saying that. But to continue your analogy, do you not think that in a world where all the bridges are made of wood it would be notable to say that a new bridge is made of steel? Of course there are impressive projects made with C. But we generally don't build large bridges out of wood anymore do we.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  > do you not think that in a world where all the bridges are made of wood it would be notable to say that a new bridge is made of steel? Notable, sure. But it could turn out to be Tacoma Narrows bridge. We never did build large bridges out of wood, I think. For the right context, wood is still a preferred material for some bridges.
  - IshKebab 2y ago
    > We never did build large bridges out of wood, I think. Yes we did. They just haven't survived. For example London Bridge was "various wooden bridges, AD 50 – 1176".
    - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
      I guess "large" has a bit of wiggle room built in.
vacuity 2y ago
Try your best to ignore the rewrite-it-in-Rust people. They're just plain wrong for that. But yes, for a niche like browser engines, Rust is pretty darn well suited.

jancsika 2y ago

> There are long lasting bridges made of stone, concrete and in the right climates, even wood. Not to mention rope when it suits the purpose. I'd be fine with someone building a new browser out of stone, concrete, wood, or even rope. Just don't build it out of C/C++ because those languages aren't memory safe.

PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
Rust is a risk-reduction strategy. It is not a risk-elimination strategy. There are risk-reduction strategies one can follow with C++, which offer some fraction of the reduction that Rust does (opinions vary on the value of the fraction). Rust enforces risk-reduction strategies, which in some contexts may be of value all by itself. Language choice does not eliminate risks in software.
- IshKebab 2y ago
  > opinions vary on the value of the fraction They don't really. It's been shown by many studies that 2/3 of security bugs are memory safety errors. That's the minimum that Rust can eliminate. It actually should eliminate more because it also has the strong type system and tree-ownership style that help reduce the chance of logic bugs unrelated to memory safety too (similar to Haskell and other very strongly typed languages). This is probably the biggest data set: https://security.googleblog.com/2024/09/eliminating-memory-safety-vulnerabilities-Android.html https://security.googleblog.com/2024/09/eliminating-memory-s... Unfortunately they don't break out non-memory safety vulnerabilities, but they've almost eliminated memory safety vulnerabilities by writing new code in Rust.

IshKebab 2y ago

Nobody is saying that. But to continue your analogy, do you not think that in a world where all the bridges are made of wood it would be notable to say that a new bridge is made of steel? Of course there are impressive projects made with C. But we generally don't build large bridges out of wood anymore do we.

PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
> do you not think that in a world where all the bridges are made of wood it would be notable to say that a new bridge is made of steel? Notable, sure. But it could turn out to be Tacoma Narrows bridge. We never did build large bridges out of wood, I think. For the right context, wood is still a preferred material for some bridges.
- IshKebab 2y ago
  > We never did build large bridges out of wood, I think. Yes we did. They just haven't survived. For example London Bridge was "various wooden bridges, AD 50 – 1176".
  - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
    I guess "large" has a bit of wiggle room built in.

vacuity 2y ago

Try your best to ignore the rewrite-it-in-Rust people. They're just plain wrong for that. But yes, for a niche like browser engines, Rust is pretty darn well suited.