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Google says replacing C/C++ in firmware with Rust is easy
(www.theregister.com)
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this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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That seems like a poor attitude imo.
A valid point tho. Generally it is difficult to ask everybody to learn a new language.
I mean, I work as a software engineering and if I'm not doing continuing ed, be it about architecture, storage, or new languages, I'm going to be of less value in the marketplace. I've learnt languages I didn't particularly want to in the past for work (though I generally came to tolerate or even like some of them. Not lua, though; lua can go to hell).
If Rust truly is the better, safer option, then these people are holding everything back.
"learn Rust" in this case is learn it to a level where all of the little behaviour around cross language integrations are understood and security flaws won't be introduced. Expert level.
It's not "I did a pet project over the weekend".
You are correct and I am aware of that. However, it also seems that they both refuse to learn it and refuse to work with people at that expert level based on the recent drama, which seems very much like holding things back to me.
If you mean the drama I'm thinking off, that seemed to me to be a guy taking on a role that was always going to be 90% political because people are resistant, and sometimes downright hostile, to change and then flouncing off when it was 90% political.
He spent four years as the project maintainer. That's hardly "flouncing off."
Flouncing off is about the drama of leaving, not the time served before doing so. You can be in a role for decades and then flounce off!
Oh. Well, in that case, his resignation message was pretty matter-of-fact, not dramatic. He did link, in a note at the end of the email, to the now-infamous "the fact is, you're not going to force everyone to learn Rust" video, and the drama was more or less self-manufacturing from there. But to be honest, I think it's a good thing that more people are seeing that video than otherwise would have, and I can't really blame him for linking to it.
And isn't it somewhat concerning that bringing Rust to the kernel is still so controversial and highly "political", several years after initial approval by Linus and Greg KH?
That's a lot easily than learning the C to the same level and they "force" everyone to learn C.
Sure for newcomers to a project like the Linux kernel they have to learn C , because that is what the project is currently written in, but trying to transition the Linux kernel to rust forces people who already are contributing to go and learn rust to be able to continue what they were already doing. And sure you can argue that it's being done so not everything has to go over at once, but there is a level of rust knowledge required at the interface between the two languages, and that burden is as far as I've seen being forced on those long term contributors.
It's not the same thing.
This is not what is happening. The current long term contributors were asked to clarify semantics about C APIs, so the Rust maintainers could take it from there. At no point were the C maintainers asked to help maintain the Rust bindings.
C/C++ is the bedrock of our modern civilization in some ways more fundamental than actual bedrock, the first step in getting any OS running is making it run C and after that you are basically done, it’s not surprising that developers resist, if nothing else it’s a common language, and standards are hard to change on the best of days. This isn’t just learning a language, it’s a complete paradigm shift.
The bedrock of modern civilizations is expensive to develop, buggy and unergonomic though.
If you make C run, you probably (I'm not sure, would have to verify) can make rust run. And if there isn't yet, there will probably soon be a C compiler written in rust, so you can choose to bootstrap from wherever you prefer.
C's ABI will probably last longer than C, since there is not a stable rust ABI though.
You cannot, today, build a Rust compiler directly from C, but you're right that people are working on it. See this recent post: https://notgull.net/announcing-dozer/
Edit: you can certainly bootstrap Rust from C via C++, as the article covers. I misinterpreted the comment above.
Currently it's a long chain from an early version of GCC to the latest one, then mrustc (in C++) which can compile rustc 1.54.0.
To be fair, in that article mentions the way to get rust from C. Sure, there is not a compiler written in C, but C is down there in the list of compilers needed for rust, so "just" need to compile some other compilers in the middle.
Ah, sorry, I misinterpreted your comment somehow. Yes, Rust is bootstrappable today, it's just a much longer process than it would be if there were a compiler written in C.
It's not a question of what's the better option. In reality we have a lot of software that already exists and works, and you can't replace it all in bulk at the same time. So the question is whether the implementation of Rust makes logistical sense, given the difficulties of maintaining currently existing software while replacing some parts of it.
Fortunately, they aren’t being asked to do that. All the rust team was requesting was metadata about the call signatures so that they could have a grasp on expected behavior.
It would be a valid point if he weren't literally speaking over the people trying to tell him that they're not demanding he learn Rust: https://youtu.be/WiPp9YEBV0Q?si=b3OB4Y9LU-ffJA4c&t=1548
It isn't unreasonable to ask someone to learn a new language, if they currently only speak Sumeric.
Oh jeeze, you have no idea. You can watch it yourself: https://youtu.be/WiPp9YEBV0Q?si=b3OB4Y9LU-ffJA4c&t=1548
That timestamp is about where the audience member (a maintainer of ext4 and related utilities) starts speaking. The "here's the thing" quote is around 28:40.
Wow what an absolute dick
I mean aren't they forcing everyone else to learn C/C++ otherwise? If we follow that logic, at least
I guess you can argue it's already written in C. So that was always a requirement.
That way we'll just find maintainers went near extinct over time, just like COBOL developers that are as rare as they are expensive. Only Linux kernel isn't a bank, and maybe will not have as much money to pay to rare developers capable of maintaining C codebase
Care to take a shot at figuring out why COBOL is still used today?
I mean, feel free to waste your time arguing for rewrites in your flavor of the month. That's how many failed projects start, too, so you can have your shot at proving them wrong.
But in the meantime you can try to think about the problem, because "rewrite it in Rust" is only reasonable for the types who are completely oblivious to the realities of professional software development.
It's used because the ones who use it have enough money to pay for any problems that may arise from it's use, and known problems are deemed better than unknown ones.
It is a viable model when you have enough money and resources, but a conservative one
That's laughable. Literally the whole world uses it. Are you telling me that everyone in the world just loves to waste money? Unbelievable.
Have you ever worked at large old corporation? Wasting money is a bit of an underestimation on that scale.
Also, not all banks use COBOL, but the ones that don't are usually much younger.
Besides, Ada would've been a better example, as it is used by telecoms and seems to be held in high regard, unlike COBOL. The only issue with Ada I heard of is that it's on par with C++ in complexity which is far from being simple.
I'm not sure you understand that it's way more than "large old corporations" that use it. Everyone uses it, from large multinationals to small one-taxi shops, and even guys like you and me in personal projects. This has been going on for years. I really don't know what led you to talk about large old corporations, seriously.
Are we still talking about COBOL?
Yeah, I know, but I meant that that technically forces C on everyone.