4 ms·

This is a really bad take, on par with the "we don't need types" post from last week. The thing I wish we would remember, as developers, is that not all progra

This is a really bad take, on par with the "we don't need types" post from last week. The thing I wish we would remember, as developers, is that not all programs need to be so "safe". They really, truly don't. We all grew up loving lots of unsafe software. Star Fox 64, MS Paint, FruityLoops... the sad truth is that developers are so job-pilled and have pager-trauma, so they don't even remember why they got in the game. I remember reading somewhere that Andrew Kelley wrote zig because he didn't have a good language to write a DAW in, and I think its so well suited to stuff like that! Make cool creative software you like in zig, and people that get hella about memory bugs can stay mad. Meanwhile, everyone knows that memory bugs made super mario world better, not worse.

dayvster 1y ago
Uh I'm confused, so you think my take is bad because memory safety should not matter ?
- scoopdewoop 1y ago
  I think its a bad take because "Developers are not Idiots" and "be disciplined" are not good arguments. Its just choosing to ignore the problem rust solves. I am fine with ignoring the problems that rust solves, but not because I'm smart and disciplined. It just fits my use-case of making fast _non-critical_ software. I don't think we should rewrite security and networking stacks in it.
  - dayvster 1y ago
    Then we're sort of in agreement. I don't think you need the ritual and complexity that rust brings for small and simple scripts and CLI utilities...
    - KuSpa 1y ago
      And rust doesn't market itself as small and simple scripting language? Choose the tool that fits your usecase. You would never bring wasm unity to render a static html file. But if you make a browsergame, you might want to.
AlotOfReading 1y ago
The thing I wish we would remember, as developers, is that not all programs need to be so "safe". "Safety" is just a shorthand for "my program means what I say". Unsafety is semantic gibberish. There's lots of reasons to write artistically gibberish code, just as there is with natural language (e.g. Lewis Carroll). Most programs aren't going for code as art though. They're trying to accomplish something definite through a computer and gibberish is directly counterproductive. If you don't mean what you write or care what you get, software seems like the wrong way to accomplish your goals. I'd still question whether you want software even in a probabilistic argument along these lines. Even for those cases where gibberish is meaningful at a higher level (like IOCCC and poetry), it should be intentional and very carefully crafted. You can use escape hatches to accomplish this in Rust, though I make no comment on the artistic merits of doing so. The argument you're making is that uncontrolled, unintentional gibberish is a positive attribute. I find that a difficult argument to accept. If we could wave a magic wand and make all code safe with no downsides, who among us wouldn't? It doesn't change anything about Super Mario World speedruns because you can accomplish the same thing as arbitrary code execution inputs with binary patching. We just have this semi-irrational belief that one is cheating and one is not.
- scoopdewoop 1y ago
  > If we could wave a magic wand and make all code safe with no downsides, who among us wouldn't? Anybody would, but Rust is not that wand, and there is no wand. Code needs to _exist_ in order to matter. Time is finite, my free-time is even more limited. Most of my code is garbage collected, and runs great, but if I needed it to be really fast, I would use Zig. I don't need to be told what software is for or how to accomplish my goals, and I'm sure you wouldn't understand my goals. I've been making code creatively for almost 30 years. You might as well tell an origami artist that folding paper is a bad way to accomplish their goals. The attitude among _some_ Rust devs (or armchair coders) that there is no place for non-rust manual-memory languages is insanely disconnected with reality. Games exist, Rust ones hardly do. Synths exist, Rust ones hardly do. Not everything is a high-availability microservice or an OS kernel! Look around! Edited to add: > "Safety" is just a shorthand for "my program means what I say". Unsafety is semantic gibberish. You know this isn't true, right? "Safety" in Rust specifically means memory safety and thread safety: no use-after-free, no data races, no null/dangling pointer dereferences, no buffer overflows. That's it. It doesn't guarantee your program is correct, and it doesn't even prevent memory leaks. Things being manually managed doesn't make them gibberish, and something being implicit, rather than explicit, doesn't mean its gibberish. The attitude of Rust being bug-free is _insaaaane_. A "bug" is just code that breaks expectations, I promise we can and will write those in every language forever.

dayvster 1y ago

Uh I'm confused, so you think my take is bad because memory safety should not matter ?

scoopdewoop 1y ago
I think its a bad take because "Developers are not Idiots" and "be disciplined" are not good arguments. Its just choosing to ignore the problem rust solves. I am fine with ignoring the problems that rust solves, but not because I'm smart and disciplined. It just fits my use-case of making fast _non-critical_ software. I don't think we should rewrite security and networking stacks in it.
- dayvster 1y ago
  Then we're sort of in agreement. I don't think you need the ritual and complexity that rust brings for small and simple scripts and CLI utilities...
  - KuSpa 1y ago
    And rust doesn't market itself as small and simple scripting language? Choose the tool that fits your usecase. You would never bring wasm unity to render a static html file. But if you make a browsergame, you might want to.

AlotOfReading 1y ago

The thing I wish we would remember, as developers, is that not all programs need to be so "safe". "Safety" is just a shorthand for "my program means what I say". Unsafety is semantic gibberish. There's lots of reasons to write artistically gibberish code, just as there is with natural language (e.g. Lewis Carroll). Most programs aren't going for code as art though. They're trying to accomplish something definite through a computer and gibberish is directly counterproductive. If you don't mean what you write or care what you get, software seems like the wrong way to accomplish your goals. I'd still question whether you want software even in a probabilistic argument along these lines. Even for those cases where gibberish is meaningful at a higher level (like IOCCC and poetry), it should be intentional and very carefully crafted. You can use escape hatches to accomplish this in Rust, though I make no comment on the artistic merits of doing so. The argument you're making is that uncontrolled, unintentional gibberish is a positive attribute. I find that a difficult argument to accept. If we could wave a magic wand and make all code safe with no downsides, who among us wouldn't? It doesn't change anything about Super Mario World speedruns because you can accomplish the same thing as arbitrary code execution inputs with binary patching. We just have this semi-irrational belief that one is cheating and one is not.

scoopdewoop 1y ago
> If we could wave a magic wand and make all code safe with no downsides, who among us wouldn't? Anybody would, but Rust is not that wand, and there is no wand. Code needs to _exist_ in order to matter. Time is finite, my free-time is even more limited. Most of my code is garbage collected, and runs great, but if I needed it to be really fast, I would use Zig. I don't need to be told what software is for or how to accomplish my goals, and I'm sure you wouldn't understand my goals. I've been making code creatively for almost 30 years. You might as well tell an origami artist that folding paper is a bad way to accomplish their goals. The attitude among _some_ Rust devs (or armchair coders) that there is no place for non-rust manual-memory languages is insanely disconnected with reality. Games exist, Rust ones hardly do. Synths exist, Rust ones hardly do. Not everything is a high-availability microservice or an OS kernel! Look around! Edited to add: > "Safety" is just a shorthand for "my program means what I say". Unsafety is semantic gibberish. You know this isn't true, right? "Safety" in Rust specifically means memory safety and thread safety: no use-after-free, no data races, no null/dangling pointer dereferences, no buffer overflows. That's it. It doesn't guarantee your program is correct, and it doesn't even prevent memory leaks. Things being manually managed doesn't make them gibberish, and something being implicit, rather than explicit, doesn't mean its gibberish. The attitude of Rust being bug-free is _insaaaane_. A "bug" is just code that breaks expectations, I promise we can and will write those in every language forever.