Re: [TECH TOPIC] Rust

[James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com>]

On Sun, 2022-06-19 at 21:08 +0200, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> Hi Laurent,
> 
> On Sun, Jun 19, 2022 at 3:49 PM Laurent Pinchart
> <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com> wrote:
> > On Sun, Jun 19, 2022 at 08:56:46AM -0400, James Bottomley wrote:
[...]
> > > I really doubt anyone at the maintainer or reviewer level of the 
> > > kernel doesn't have the ability to learn rust (now whether they
> > > have the desire to is quite another matter) and I'd be surprised
> > > if we can find any kernel developer who only speaks C.  I think
> > > the biggest problem with rust is that there's definitely an anti-
> > > C bias in the language. What I mean by that is if you look at
> > > Java they chose to be as close to C where possible to make the
> > > language easier to learn.  Rust seems to have taken the opposite
> > > view and picked a lot of things which could have been C like
> > > (typing, function calls, returns, mutability, etc.) and done them
> > > differently just because they wanted to be different from
> > > C.  That does cause issues for C people because you tend to trip
> > > over the anti-C biases in the language and are constantly having
> > > to look the basic syntax up.  This really increases the learning
> > > curve going from C to rust, which gets annoying very fast, but
> > > it's not insurmountable.
> > 
> > Time to invent a C-like version of rust ? :-) Jokes aside, as far
> > as I understand the syntax is different from C because it was
> > inspired by other languages, not out of a desire to be anti-C. I
> > could be wrong though, and it doesn't really matter anyway, I doubt
> > there's anything we could do there.
> 
> When reading "things which could have been C like", I had the exact
> same thought ;-)
> 
> In the past, many new paradigms were implemented in a variety of new
> languages, usually inspired by other languages (e.g. some looked like
> C, others like Pascal).
> 
> At the risk of sounding too procrastinating (perfect is the enemy
> of good, and see James' thread about becoming too fearful...),
> perhaps it is wise to question if Rust arrived too soon, and a more
> C-like language implementing the same safety paradigms is just around
> the corner, or already in its infancy?

I'm not really sure we should wait.  The problem caused by the anti-C
biases in Rust is merely an increase in the hump you have to climb to
get a handle on the language.  As I said above, it's annoying, but not
insurmountable.  I don't think we have to wait for an easier language
for C programmers to come along to begin the Rust experiment.  Assuming
the experiment has mixed results, and that's due to people not getting
over the learning hump, we can always adopt a more C like memory safe
language later, assuming one comes along.

James