510
One Of The Rust Linux Kernel Maintainers Steps Down - Cites "Nontechnical Nonsense"
(www.phoronix.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2024
510 points (98.7% liked)
Linux
48323 readers
638 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
C is crap for anything where security matters. I'll happily take that debate with anyone who thinks differently.
No idea what you’re being downvoted. Just take a look at all the critical CVSS scored vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel over the past decade. They’re all overwhelmingly due to pitfalls of the C language - they’re rarely architectural issues but instead because some extra fluff wasn’t added to double check the size of an int or a struct etc resulting in memory corruption. Use after frees, out of bounds reads, etc.
These are pretty much wiped out entirely by Rust and caught at compile time (or at runtime with a panic).
The cognitive load of writing safe C, and the volume of extra code it requires, is the problem of C.
You can write safe C, if you know what you’re doing (but as shown by the volume of vulns, even the world’s best C programmers still make slip ups).
Rust forces safe(r) code without any of the cognitive load of C and without having to go out of your way to learn it and religiously implement it.
Oh no, i'm having a meltdown with all the cognitive load...
Build all the fancy tools you want. At the end of the day if you put a monkey at the wheel of a Ferrari you'll still have problems.
Nice that Rust is memory-safe, use it if you want, but why the insistence on selling Rust via C is crap? Doesn't earn you any points.
How about rustaceans fork the kernel and once it's fully Rust-only then try and get it to be used instead of the current one... win-win, eh?
I honestly like the cognitive load. Just not when I am at the workplace, having to deal with said load, with the office banter in the background and (not so) occasionally, being interrupted for other stuff.
And my cognitive load is not even about the memory allocations, most of the time.
Off topic:
I think, if one is seriously learning programming from a young age, it is better to start with C, make a project, big enough to feel the difficulty and understand what the cognitive load is all about and get used to it, hence increasing their mental capability. Then learn the memory safe language of their choice.
I never made a big enough project in C, but you can get to feel the load in C++ too.