4 ms·

Because someday the programming state of the art must advance beyond 1970, and someday we must stop introducing new memory safety bugs that cause horrific vulne

Because someday the programming state of the art must advance beyond 1970, and someday we must stop introducing new memory safety bugs that cause horrific vulnerabilities, and for kernel code we don't have the luxury of recompiling everything with garbage collection turned on as a band-aid for C's incurable defects.

bgwalter 10mo ago
The Unix/C people wrote their own kernel in the 1970s instead of invading an existing one.
- drekipus 10mo ago
  the kernel is the value part, not the language that the kernel is written in
- josephg 10mo ago
  If rust didn’t provide value to the Linux kernel, there’s no way it would have made out of the experimental phase. Rust isn’t an invading tribe. It’s just a tool.
  - _fe 10mo ago
    > If rust didn’t provide value to the Linux kernel, there’s no way it would have made out of the experimental phase. That’s “appeal to authority” fallacy.
    - keybored 10mo ago
      Pointing out that something was iterated upon and adopted in the place it was introduced is now a fallacy, amazing.
      - keybored 10mo ago
        - Rust is invading the Linux Kernel - Actually, The collective Linux Kernel found that it was good enough to graduate from the experimental ph— - Aha! You are appealing to the authority of the Linux Kernel. That’s a fallacy.
    - josephg 10mo ago
      You're right that I'm appealing to authority, but that doesn't make my argument invalid. The people who decided rust has value in the kernel are linux kernel developers. Ie, traditional C developers who see value in using rust in linux. Rust in linux has caused plenty of headaches. If rust didn't add commensurate value to make the trouble worth it, it wouldn't be getting adopted.
  - anal_reactor 10mo ago
    > Rust isn’t an invading tribe People doing open-source work often feel very tribal about their code and block ideas that are good but threaten their position in the community. Essentially same thing as office politics except it's not about money, it's about personal pride.
    - bgwalter 10mo ago
      I'm sure that submitting a PR to a Rust project to rewrite parts in Ada/SPARK would be met with great enthusiasm.
      - kolektiv 10mo ago
        If anyone submitted such a PR to one of my projects and could explain compelling benefits for why doing so would be a general improvement, even considering trade-offs of increased complexity/maintainability, etc., then I'd be delighted they'd cared enough to improve my software.
        jciuqgfb 10mo ago
        [flagged]
        Xylakant 10mo ago
        How is the drive-by statement of a random GH account with 9 followers representative of any community. What's the point you're trying to make? That there's people with shitty behavior in the Rust community? No surprise here, there are. That there's trolls out there that just do this for fun? It's the internet! I hope that doesn't surprise anyone by now.
        bmicraft 10mo ago
        What are you implying? I ask because you aren't actually saying anything yourself.
        dralley 10mo ago
  - bgwalter 10mo ago
    [flagged]
    - marcusb 10mo ago
      https://www.redox-os.org/ https://www.redox-os.org/
      - galangalalgol 10mo ago
        Add in theseus, tock, hubris, and hermit-os. That is just the non academic ones. As for why none of them are widely used? Drivers. It wasn't that long ago redox didn't even support usb devices. The linux kernel is a giant mashup of oodles of drivers.
  - bgwalter 10mo ago
    The "provide value" argument can be used for anything. Modern software politics and foundation sponsorship pressure are so complex that this argument may not even be true. It may be true in this case, but certainly you have seen corporate bloat being added to "open" source projects before.
    - embedding-shape 10mo ago
      > Modern software politics and foundation sponsorship pressure are so complex that this argument may not even be true. May not, or may yes. As far as I know with my own interactions with the Linux kernel community, is that it's very different from typical "modern software politics", at least different enough that I'd make the claim they're special from the other communities. If there is any community I'd assume makes most of their choices disregarding politics or pressures and purely on technical measures, it would be the Linux kernel community. With that said, no person nor community is perfect, but unless there is some hard evidence pointing to that the Linux people were forced to accept Rust into the kernel for whatever reason, then at least I'd refrain from believing in such theories.
  - iurbwdj 10mo ago
    [flagged]
    - cmeacham98 10mo ago
      Didn't Hector step down essentially as a direct result of that behavior? https://www.phoronix.com/news/Asahi-Linux-Lead-No-Upstream https://www.phoronix.com/news/Asahi-Linux-Lead-No-Upstream Do you have an example of other R4L maintainers harassment? Because you've spammed the same single example 3-4 times on this post alone.
      - jciuqgfb 10mo ago
        [flagged]
        bmicraft 10mo ago
        Do you usually create a new account for every second comment?
    - josephg 10mo ago
      I’m not really sure what point you’re making. All I see there is - or was - some unclear management within Linux itself. - There was an experiment to have rust in Linux. It got provisional approval from Linus. - Some people in the Linux kernel blocked essentially any changes being made to make the rust experiment able to succeed. - Some people who were trying to get rust into Linux got frustrated. Some quit as a result. - Eventually Linus stepped in and told everyone to play nice. This whole drama involved like 5 people. It’s not “the majority of the rust community”. And it kinda had nothing to do with rust the language. It was really a management / technical leadership challenge. And it seems like it’s been addressed by leadership stepping in and giving clearer guidelines around how rust and C should interoperate, both at a technical and interpersonal level. So what’s your point? Is rust bad because some people had an argument about it on the Linux kernel mailing list about it? ‘Cos uh, that’s not exactly a new thing.
      - 10mo ago
- g947o 10mo ago
  "invading" I'm sure your choice of words helps the discussion.
- zaphar 10mo ago
  They wrote their own language (C) too. They invented a new language because the current crop of languages didn't suit their needs. Your argument ignores the parts of history that are inconvenient and highlights the ones that you think support it.
  - pjmlp 10mo ago
    You mean as in "having fun"? "Although we entertained occasional thoughts about implementing one of the major languages of the time like Fortran, PL/I, or Algol 68, such a project seemed hopelessly large for our resources: much simpler and smaller tools were called for. All these languages influenced our work, but it was more fun to do things on our own." -- https://www.nokia.com/bell-labs/about/dennis-m-ritchie/chist.html https://www.nokia.com/bell-labs/about/dennis-m-ritchie/chist... People arguing for UNIX/C, also tend to forget the decade of systems languages that predates them, starting with JOVIAL in 1958. They also forget that after coming up with UNIX/C, they went on to create Plan 9, which was supposed to use Alef, abandoned its designed, later acknowledege lack of GC as an key issue, created Inferno and Limbo, finalizing with contributions to Go's original design. "Alef appeared in the first and second editions of Plan 9, but was abandoned during development of the third edition.[1][2] Rob Pike later explained Alef's demise by pointing to its lack of automatic memory management, despite Pike's and other people's urging Winterbottom to add garbage collection to the language;[3] also, in a February 2000 slideshow, Pike noted: "…although Alef was a fruitful language, it proved too difficult to maintain a variant language across multiple architectures, so we took what we learned from it and built the thread library for C."[4]" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alef_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alef_(programming_language) UNIX and C creators moved on, apparently those that whorship them haven't got the history lesson up to date.
    - zaphar 10mo ago
      for a project like unix at the time and even linux now I think "having fun" is absolutely one of their needs.
      - leftyspook 10mo ago
- MSFT_Edging 10mo ago
  Back when the primary consumers of the kernel were other researchers. Not billions of machines running our society.

bgwalter 10mo ago

The Unix/C people wrote their own kernel in the 1970s instead of invading an existing one.

drekipus 10mo ago
the kernel is the value part, not the language that the kernel is written in
josephg 10mo ago
If rust didn’t provide value to the Linux kernel, there’s no way it would have made out of the experimental phase. Rust isn’t an invading tribe. It’s just a tool.
- _fe 10mo ago
  > If rust didn’t provide value to the Linux kernel, there’s no way it would have made out of the experimental phase. That’s “appeal to authority” fallacy.
  - keybored 10mo ago
    Pointing out that something was iterated upon and adopted in the place it was introduced is now a fallacy, amazing.
    - keybored 10mo ago
      - Rust is invading the Linux Kernel - Actually, The collective Linux Kernel found that it was good enough to graduate from the experimental ph— - Aha! You are appealing to the authority of the Linux Kernel. That’s a fallacy.
  - josephg 10mo ago
    You're right that I'm appealing to authority, but that doesn't make my argument invalid. The people who decided rust has value in the kernel are linux kernel developers. Ie, traditional C developers who see value in using rust in linux. Rust in linux has caused plenty of headaches. If rust didn't add commensurate value to make the trouble worth it, it wouldn't be getting adopted.
- anal_reactor 10mo ago
  > Rust isn’t an invading tribe People doing open-source work often feel very tribal about their code and block ideas that are good but threaten their position in the community. Essentially same thing as office politics except it's not about money, it's about personal pride.
  - bgwalter 10mo ago
    I'm sure that submitting a PR to a Rust project to rewrite parts in Ada/SPARK would be met with great enthusiasm.
    - kolektiv 10mo ago
      If anyone submitted such a PR to one of my projects and could explain compelling benefits for why doing so would be a general improvement, even considering trade-offs of increased complexity/maintainability, etc., then I'd be delighted they'd cared enough to improve my software.
      - jciuqgfb 10mo ago
        [flagged]
        Xylakant 10mo ago
        How is the drive-by statement of a random GH account with 9 followers representative of any community. What's the point you're trying to make? That there's people with shitty behavior in the Rust community? No surprise here, there are. That there's trolls out there that just do this for fun? It's the internet! I hope that doesn't surprise anyone by now.
        bmicraft 10mo ago
        What are you implying? I ask because you aren't actually saying anything yourself.
        dralley 10mo ago
- bgwalter 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  - marcusb 10mo ago
    https://www.redox-os.org/ https://www.redox-os.org/
    - galangalalgol 10mo ago
      Add in theseus, tock, hubris, and hermit-os. That is just the non academic ones. As for why none of them are widely used? Drivers. It wasn't that long ago redox didn't even support usb devices. The linux kernel is a giant mashup of oodles of drivers.
- bgwalter 10mo ago
  The "provide value" argument can be used for anything. Modern software politics and foundation sponsorship pressure are so complex that this argument may not even be true. It may be true in this case, but certainly you have seen corporate bloat being added to "open" source projects before.
  - embedding-shape 10mo ago
    > Modern software politics and foundation sponsorship pressure are so complex that this argument may not even be true. May not, or may yes. As far as I know with my own interactions with the Linux kernel community, is that it's very different from typical "modern software politics", at least different enough that I'd make the claim they're special from the other communities. If there is any community I'd assume makes most of their choices disregarding politics or pressures and purely on technical measures, it would be the Linux kernel community. With that said, no person nor community is perfect, but unless there is some hard evidence pointing to that the Linux people were forced to accept Rust into the kernel for whatever reason, then at least I'd refrain from believing in such theories.
- iurbwdj 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  - cmeacham98 10mo ago
    Didn't Hector step down essentially as a direct result of that behavior? https://www.phoronix.com/news/Asahi-Linux-Lead-No-Upstream https://www.phoronix.com/news/Asahi-Linux-Lead-No-Upstream Do you have an example of other R4L maintainers harassment? Because you've spammed the same single example 3-4 times on this post alone.
    - jciuqgfb 10mo ago
      [flagged]
      - bmicraft 10mo ago
        Do you usually create a new account for every second comment?
  - josephg 10mo ago
    I’m not really sure what point you’re making. All I see there is - or was - some unclear management within Linux itself. - There was an experiment to have rust in Linux. It got provisional approval from Linus. - Some people in the Linux kernel blocked essentially any changes being made to make the rust experiment able to succeed. - Some people who were trying to get rust into Linux got frustrated. Some quit as a result. - Eventually Linus stepped in and told everyone to play nice. This whole drama involved like 5 people. It’s not “the majority of the rust community”. And it kinda had nothing to do with rust the language. It was really a management / technical leadership challenge. And it seems like it’s been addressed by leadership stepping in and giving clearer guidelines around how rust and C should interoperate, both at a technical and interpersonal level. So what’s your point? Is rust bad because some people had an argument about it on the Linux kernel mailing list about it? ‘Cos uh, that’s not exactly a new thing.
    - 10mo ago
g947o 10mo ago
"invading" I'm sure your choice of words helps the discussion.
zaphar 10mo ago
They wrote their own language (C) too. They invented a new language because the current crop of languages didn't suit their needs. Your argument ignores the parts of history that are inconvenient and highlights the ones that you think support it.
- pjmlp 10mo ago
  You mean as in "having fun"? "Although we entertained occasional thoughts about implementing one of the major languages of the time like Fortran, PL/I, or Algol 68, such a project seemed hopelessly large for our resources: much simpler and smaller tools were called for. All these languages influenced our work, but it was more fun to do things on our own." -- https://www.nokia.com/bell-labs/about/dennis-m-ritchie/chist.html https://www.nokia.com/bell-labs/about/dennis-m-ritchie/chist... People arguing for UNIX/C, also tend to forget the decade of systems languages that predates them, starting with JOVIAL in 1958. They also forget that after coming up with UNIX/C, they went on to create Plan 9, which was supposed to use Alef, abandoned its designed, later acknowledege lack of GC as an key issue, created Inferno and Limbo, finalizing with contributions to Go's original design. "Alef appeared in the first and second editions of Plan 9, but was abandoned during development of the third edition.[1][2] Rob Pike later explained Alef's demise by pointing to its lack of automatic memory management, despite Pike's and other people's urging Winterbottom to add garbage collection to the language;[3] also, in a February 2000 slideshow, Pike noted: "…although Alef was a fruitful language, it proved too difficult to maintain a variant language across multiple architectures, so we took what we learned from it and built the thread library for C."[4]" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alef_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alef_(programming_language) UNIX and C creators moved on, apparently those that whorship them haven't got the history lesson up to date.
  - zaphar 10mo ago
    for a project like unix at the time and even linux now I think "having fun" is absolutely one of their needs.
    - leftyspook 10mo ago
MSFT_Edging 10mo ago
Back when the primary consumers of the kernel were other researchers. Not billions of machines running our society.