pizlonator

5 ms·

31.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
This is a simple fact. The Fil-C runtime is tiny compared to TS and C#
32.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
First of all, it’s incredible that on a HN thread about a language that isn’t C, there are 46 mentions of Fil-C! You guys are obsessed! I make bold claims because they hold water. - You can at worst corrupt only the capability you’re pointi
33.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
Yes, being able to build small and fast binaries in TS would be a valuable capability, which is why basically all of us who work in this space have thought of this idea and rejected it after going deep on it. This isn’t a new idea. CanadaHo
34.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
They will have untyped dependencies. That’s how the TS/JS ecosystem works. Note that “untyped dependency” means any code that says `any`.
35.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
Yeah - using quickjs at all in a thing that needs perf. Quickjs is hilariously slow. Midwits use it because it has “quick” in the name. - using floats for numbers and deferring int optimizations for later. Inferring ints is like half the pr
36.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
That explains why: - the architecture is idiotic. - they have zero credible perf numbers. I plan to benchmark it using generally accepted methods. Porffor makes careful trade offs that make sense and is benchmarked in a way that I can belie
37.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
Before I started talking about Fil-C, discussions about Rust’s memory safety lacked nuance: folks claimed that if you just compiled your code in Rust then it would be memory safe. I have added the nuance. Folks now understand that there are
38.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
Memory safety can be defined in more than one way, so it’s super worthwhile to figure out how to define it and what meets the definition and what doesn’t. We should do more of that as a community. It’s important stuff. Ima do my part so you
39.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
other implementations of fat pointers (that I’m aware of) have no distinction between flight and rest; they store what I call flight pointers in memory literally. The closest technique to invisicaps is softbound, but that has issues that in
40.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
The problem with this post is the extent to which it shows that its author has an unhealthy obsession with me personally. It’s weird but also oddly flattering. I don’t dislike Rust, and when I point out that Rust is not fully memory safe, i
41.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
Yes
42.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
Invisicaps are not exactly fat pointers. Fat pointers show up inline in memory, which has a bunch of problems: - sizeof(void*) changes - either you let the bounds get corrupted by bad casts, unions, and other issues, or you impose restricti
43.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
What a weird take. I think the limits of Rust’s memory safety are interesting to discuss, as are the limits of Fil-C’s perf and practicality. It’s best to discuss these things rationally, rather than accusing folks of trying to draw attenti
44.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
The “bug” in your example hinges on this: > if (p == bar) It is not in scope of memory safety to make sure that logic not related to memory accesses works as you expected. In Fil-C, the integer pointer value (the intval) is not trusted.
45.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
I define memory safety in terms of capabilities, which is a mainstream definition. The worst that can happen in a race is that you read or write an object that would have been accessible even in the absence of races. The thing that makes ra
46.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
Rereading your post, I think I just disagree on two things: I don’t think Rust users can be trivialized into the “two kinds” that you list, and if one of the kinds is “app developer” then I bet you there are apps where Fil-C’s value proposi
47.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
Fil-C is much faster than Python And it’s fun to write new code in.
48.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
Nonsense. In a race, you at worst access an object you could have loaded from whatever field you were racing on. In Go, you can bypass all protections and corrupt all of memory if you race on structs (I think).
49.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
mmap is a great example of Fil-C providing a unique level of safety. You can’t use mmap in a way that corrupts memory in Fil-C Try it. :-)
50.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
Yeah what I said is true of TS and C#, but not of Go. Go’s situation is nuanced since a lot of Go code does rely on unsafe C or C++ deps, but I have no idea how generally true that is. Also Go’s protections fall apart under certain races, w
51.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
Those languages rely on a much larger pile of YOLO C/C++ code for their runtimes and standard libraries than Fil-C does. So Fil-C is safer than those
52.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
I’ve never said that Fil-C is better than Rust full stop . I have articulated the specific ways that Fil-C is better. And I’ve articulated the specific ways that Rust is better. You’ve enumerated some of those reasons from your perspective
53.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
If you think you like Fil-C but aren’t able to see the specific way in which it’s better than Rust (more comprehensive safety), then what is it that you’re liking?
54.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
Fil-C has no unsafe blocks
55.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
Sure all of those are escape hatches that work against any memory safety tech. Point is, Fil-C goes further than any other memory safety tech in terms of what it guards
56.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
Custom libc does not call to system libc. “Custom” and “system” aren’t the terms I use; I say user libc and you libc (because they are basically the same libc - either both are musl or both are glibc). User libc calls to the Fil-C runtime,
57.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
I remember reading his column in PC Magazine in he 90s He was all about OS/2 Good times
58.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
Incredible. I had to dig for the source: https://huggingface.co/blog/security-incident-july-2026 section “the asymmetry problem” Quote: “When we started the log analysis, we first used frontier models behind commercial
59.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
Yes The only truth is shipping code Specs are secondary
60.
by pizlonator 3mo ago
They're claiming that it's a cheaper alternative to Fable/Sol If that's true, then the price makes sense

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