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A comment on Why you should, actually, rewrite some of it in Rust. Parent comment

Re:Why you should, actually, rewrite some of it in Rust by cyphar on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @04:55PM (#14756596)
I'm not sure I agree with the amount of hyperbole in the original post, but you must be joking if you want to claim that browsers or OSes are "safe" in the Rust sense of the word.

Use after frees and numerous other memory bugs are discovered all the time in C/C++ programs (including kernels and browsers). This isn't an imaginary problem. Then combine multithreading and you've got a whole extra level of possible issues. Rust does solve many of these problems, and you can prove it does so mathematically.

I understand why people don't like the use of the term "safe" because it feels like a value judgement. But I think people's egos really should be a bit less fragile when discussing language choices.

> Then just delete your entire OS or at least your browser, don't force yourself to use C and C++ software.

With RedoxOS you actually could do that in the near future once it supports some more hardware. The kernel and entire userland (with graphics) is written in Rust. And they did it in 2 years. If nothing else you have to admit that there are some very talented engineers using Rust.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why you should, actually, rewrite some of it in Rust by FRex on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @07:00PM (#14757420)
Your point being exactly what? Don't put words in my mouth because I never claimed C and C++ are as safe as Rust, just that they are good enough for millions, including you, to rely on daily with their lives and that Rust itself relies on some C++ (LLVM). I'd even say that yes, C is the least friendly and most spartan language and C++ is the most complex and hard language that are in wide use nowdays but that wasn't the OP's claim. The OP's claim was ridiculous and on the level of opinion people have of Java applets ("totally unsafe", "useless", etc.). These people who have such opinions of them don't run them in their browsers so you should not run any C or C++ on your machine either or you are clearly overdramatizing.

Mathematical provability and technical excellence has sadly little to do with adoption - see where JavaScript, Erlang, Haskell, OCalm, Modula, etc. ended up and tell me every language got what it deserved based on its own merit.

Fanboying over Rust and RedoxOS (it being impressive or not is besides the point) won't fix all that "doable if stars align C" and "humanly impossible C++ that has UB even after few lines" code out there in the government, power plants (including nuclear), infrastructure, stores, embedded, banks, ...

Egos have nothing to do with it. I dislike JavaScript, Java and C# personally (not for any technical reasons but due to my tastes) but if I've seen someone saying the are useless and everything written in them is broken I'd call BS. I'm similarly fond of Free Pascal with LCL for personal GUI toys but if someone said it'll take over the world and destroy Qt and GTK+ behemoths I'd also call BS. Hell, I'd defend your precious little Rust if someone said something stupid about it.

There's factual critique (which I have lots of myself and I don't recommend C or C++ to new hobbyist programmers but Python3), there's personal taste (that you mustn't camouflage as technical opinions) and then there's pedal to the metal "I hate the language so it's totally useless and no human can use it" BS like the OP's comment.

Rust supposedly targets C and C++ programmers so it shouldn't be acceptable to shit all over their tools and by extension their work, telling them they are stupid for liking these languages and are doing everything wrong as an engineer. The fact that such BS is disallowed in official Rust spaces is really telling of how idiotic and ridiculous it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14755394

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why you should, actually, rewrite some of it in Rust by akavel on Wednesday July 12, 2017 @07:15PM (#14757497)
Regarding my initial outburst, I'd like to clarify that it was specifically against a comment claiming that rewriting C code in ("modern" or not, whatever) C++ is the safest choice if someone is worried about security of a C codebase. I didn't actually even say a word about Rust. The C vs. C++ claim there was already enough to make me want to cry loud.
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