this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
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Linus Torvalds Speaks on the the divide between Rust and C Linux developers an the future Linux. Will things like fragmentation among the open source community hurt the Linux Kernel? We'll listen to the Creator of Linux.

For the full key note, checkout: Keynote: Linus Torvalds in Conversation with Dirk Hohndel

The Register's summary: Torvalds weighs in on 'nasty' Rust vs C for Linux debate

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Rust is harder to write but infinitely safer, and equivalent in speed.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago (4 children)

It's harder to write because it forces you to be careful.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It forces you to be careful in the way it wants you to be careful. Which is fine, but it makes it a strange beastie for anyone not used to it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Yes

But the trade off is well worth it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It can be, sure. I prefer garbage collectors but I'm not doing systems programming.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I feel like a garbage collector would be too much a performance hit for kernel stuff.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

2 things:

  1. It's more the determinacy, a GC randomly fires up and your systems stops for some long amount of time. There are pauseless GCs but that's a different nightmare.

  2. The kernel has things similar to GCs. They're used for more specialized tasks, and some (like rcu) are absolute nightmares that have take decades to get working.

[–] nous 10 points 1 month ago

C is easier to get a program to compile. Rust is easier to get a program working correctly.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

And because it looks like C, JavaScript, Bash and a few others all mixed up together.

I've heard Rust described as “Rust is what you get when you put all the good features of other programming languages together. You can't read it, but it's freaking fast!”

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Looking back on my comment, I don't know why I was thinking of Bash. It does look a lot like JavaScript/Typescript, and C.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

it's more "it forces you to make it burrow checker friendly".

A burrow checker is not the only mechanism to write safe code. All the mess of Rust is all because this is the strategy they adopted.

And this strategy, like everything in this world, has trade offs. It just happens that there are a lot, like, - a lot -, of trade offs, and those are insufferable when it comes to Rust...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Gotta watch out for those rabbits messing with your kernel