4 ms·

This just doesn't make a lot of sense to me, given that almost all systems programming in the real world is done in C and C++, and given the complexity of OS ke

This just doesn't make a lot of sense to me, given that almost all systems programming in the real world is done in C and C++, and given the complexity of OS kernels, we're not going to see a general purpose commercial grade one written in Rust either ever (if it falls out of popularity) or for ten to fifteen years (if it becomes very popular). This isn't like application or web programming - in comparison to web technologies it moves at a glacial pace. So I think teaching an OS course in Rust is going to leave them underprepared and be a big shock if the students actually go on to do systems programming on real systems. The other thing is that I did an OS course in C, where we got dirty playing around in the depths of the Linux kernel, replacing the scheduler, writing a filesystem, and so on. It was damn hard, but probably one of the only courses in Uni that really pushed me as a programmer generally (everything else I found easy). I think that it really helps to have experience in unsafe languages like C, just like you really need to do at least a bit of assembly when you teach computer organisation.

pcwalton 13y ago
I'm not sure the lack of safety is the pedagogically interesting part though. The interesting parts of writing a kernel for x86 are the low-level interfaces: assembly, I/O ports, the 8259A PIC, the fundamentals of scheduling, writing a slab allocator, and so forth. Rust allows unfettered access to those just as C does. The lack of safety in C just means that the projects take longer to debug because the compiler doesn't catch as many mistakes; I don't think it adds much to the learning experience.
sixbrx 13y ago
You may be imagining that it will be complete OS/systems written in non-C language from scratch, but it doesn't have to happen that way. With languages with no GC or optional GC, calling back and forth between the new language and C is easy and direct, and so writing only new (or maybe historically problematic) pieces of a system in the new language becomes feasible.
pjmlp 13y ago
Most of the real world uses C and C++, because of the vicious cycle he mentions on the post. You don't need C's lack of safety everywhere for doing an OS. There were OS written in Mesa, Modula-2, Modula-3, Object Pascal, Oberon, Ada and many others. C's strings and vectors are recipe for security exploits without any benefit for kernel programming. Or lack of type safety between compilation units. It is a very good thing students learn C and C++ aren't the only way to write an OS. Sometimes the world seems to forget other languages have been used for the same purpose.

pcwalton 13y ago

I'm not sure the lack of safety is the pedagogically interesting part though. The interesting parts of writing a kernel for x86 are the low-level interfaces: assembly, I/O ports, the 8259A PIC, the fundamentals of scheduling, writing a slab allocator, and so forth. Rust allows unfettered access to those just as C does. The lack of safety in C just means that the projects take longer to debug because the compiler doesn't catch as many mistakes; I don't think it adds much to the learning experience.

sixbrx 13y ago

You may be imagining that it will be complete OS/systems written in non-C language from scratch, but it doesn't have to happen that way. With languages with no GC or optional GC, calling back and forth between the new language and C is easy and direct, and so writing only new (or maybe historically problematic) pieces of a system in the new language becomes feasible.

pjmlp 13y ago

Most of the real world uses C and C++, because of the vicious cycle he mentions on the post. You don't need C's lack of safety everywhere for doing an OS. There were OS written in Mesa, Modula-2, Modula-3, Object Pascal, Oberon, Ada and many others. C's strings and vectors are recipe for security exploits without any benefit for kernel programming. Or lack of type safety between compilation units. It is a very good thing students learn C and C++ aren't the only way to write an OS. Sometimes the world seems to forget other languages have been used for the same purpose.