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Far better justification for a rewrite like this is if it eases maintenance, or simplifies building/testing/distribution. Taking an experienced and committed te

Far better justification for a rewrite like this is if it eases maintenance, or simplifies building/testing/distribution. Taking an experienced and committed team of C developers with a mature code base, and retraining them to rewrite their project in Rust for its own sake is pretty absurd. But if you have a team that’s more comfortable in Rust, then doing so could make a lot of sense - and, yes, make it easier to ensure the product is secure and memory-safe.

johnisgood 2y ago
> if you have a team that’s more comfortable in As is the case with any languages, of course, it is not in favor (nor against) Rust.
maccard 2y ago
Disagree - a rewrite for “maintainability” is an engineer saying they want to rewrite in their preferred language. I wouldn’t allow someone on my team to rewrite a core dependency for “maintainability”, but I absolutely would if they suggested it would be faster and safer.
- ForTheKidz 2y ago
  > a rewrite for “maintainability” is an engineer saying they want to rewrite in their preferred language Not necessarily—sometimes languages are especially poorly suited for tasks or difficult to hire for.
  - maccard 2y ago
    We’re talking about a rust rewrite of a fairly core level library. I don’t think C is inherently unsuitable or difficult to hire for. If the library was in Fortran then maybe. But yes you are technically correct, congratulations.
    - ForTheKidz 2y ago
      I was responding to a general claim. In any case, I certainly disagree that C is suitable in 2025 for the vast majority of possible use-cases. For fun? Sure, but not for shipping code you want to rely on. Obviously the code isn't going anywhere, and obviously we DO have reliable code we've built with C. But acting like C and Rust deliver equivalent value is simply farcical: you choose C for rapid development and cheap devs (or some other niche concern, like using an obscure embedded arch), and you choose rust to solve the problems that C introduced.
      - johnisgood 2y ago
        Million dollar question: why Rust over <insert any memory safe language>? Common Lisp? OCaml, Ada / SPARK, etc. if not C?

johnisgood 2y ago

> if you have a team that’s more comfortable in As is the case with any languages, of course, it is not in favor (nor against) Rust.

maccard 2y ago

Disagree - a rewrite for “maintainability” is an engineer saying they want to rewrite in their preferred language. I wouldn’t allow someone on my team to rewrite a core dependency for “maintainability”, but I absolutely would if they suggested it would be faster and safer.

ForTheKidz 2y ago
> a rewrite for “maintainability” is an engineer saying they want to rewrite in their preferred language Not necessarily—sometimes languages are especially poorly suited for tasks or difficult to hire for.
- maccard 2y ago
  We’re talking about a rust rewrite of a fairly core level library. I don’t think C is inherently unsuitable or difficult to hire for. If the library was in Fortran then maybe. But yes you are technically correct, congratulations.
  - ForTheKidz 2y ago
    I was responding to a general claim. In any case, I certainly disagree that C is suitable in 2025 for the vast majority of possible use-cases. For fun? Sure, but not for shipping code you want to rely on. Obviously the code isn't going anywhere, and obviously we DO have reliable code we've built with C. But acting like C and Rust deliver equivalent value is simply farcical: you choose C for rapid development and cheap devs (or some other niche concern, like using an obscure embedded arch), and you choose rust to solve the problems that C introduced.
    - johnisgood 2y ago
      Million dollar question: why Rust over <insert any memory safe language>? Common Lisp? OCaml, Ada / SPARK, etc. if not C?