Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2024 15:20:26 -0400 From: Karl Denninger <karl@denninger.net> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: The Case for Rust (in any system) Message-ID: <b2c6c38c-4e14-4e3e-b6ac-3f9c13519a0f@denninger.net> In-Reply-To: <CAOtMX2iCNX5OkdeghnbmcMrO0UYWwm4zfxFSZGznOznu%2Bmh5rA@mail.gmail.com> References: <CAOtMX2iCNX5OkdeghnbmcMrO0UYWwm4zfxFSZGznOznu%2Bmh5rA@mail.gmail.com>
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From: Karl Denninger <karl@denninger.net>
To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Message-ID: <b2c6c38c-4e14-4e3e-b6ac-3f9c13519a0f@denninger.net>
Subject: Re: The Case for Rust (in any system)
References: <CAOtMX2iCNX5OkdeghnbmcMrO0UYWwm4zfxFSZGznOznu+mh5rA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAOtMX2iCNX5OkdeghnbmcMrO0UYWwm4zfxFSZGznOznu+mh5rA@mail.gmail.com>
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<div class=3D"moz-cite-prefix">On 9/5/2024 14:09, Alan Somers wrote:<=
br>
</div>
<blockquote type=3D"cite"
cite=3D"mid:CAOtMX2iCNX5OkdeghnbmcMrO0UYWwm4zfxFSZGznOznu+mh5rA@mail.gmai=
l.com">
<pre wrap=3D"" class=3D"moz-quote-pre">By now I expect that most of=
you have seen the long list of new
security advisories that just came out. Strikingly, all were the
result of memory handling errors. And none of them wouldn't have
happened if their respective programs had been written in a
memory-safe language.
In fact, of all the C bug fixes that I've been involved with (as
either author or reviewer) since May, about three quarters could've
been avoided just by using a better language.
The real takeaway here is that C is no longer sufficient for writing
high quality code in the 2020s. Everyone needs to adapt their tools.
Programmers who don't will increasingly come to resemble experimental
archaeologists, i.e. people who learn flintknapping to "keep the
knowledge alive". Such people are valuable, but definitely niche. I
for one don't want my career to go in that trajectory.</pre>
</blockquote>
<p>I'm sorry, this is not the correct take from it.</p>
<p>To argue that the answer is to put a diaper on a child so it does
not drop excrement on the carpet is to forever treat said human as
an infant without control of its sphincters.=C2=A0 While such an an=
swer
might be necessary for a short period of time in all young human
creatures it also should be obvious that we are all walking around
today without them and thus said prophylaxis is to cover for a
deficiency rather than a necessity.</p>
<p>Now if the prophylaxis had no cost it wouldn't matter so much,
but it does have cost (just as do diapers) in that such languages
are inherently less-efficient.=C2=A0 There is an argument for this
trade-off where the "thing" is infrequently used and thus the
impact small, but going this route for frequently-used
applications and even worse at the OS level is how we got to a
place in many application programs and operating systems where
what used to run comfortably in under a gigabyte of RAM will no
longer execute at all in four, and why an application (when
written in "C") will handle multiple camera streams in real time
with five-minute lookback buffers, has its own defensive systems
against attack and denial-of-service and internal HTML-capable
server on a $25 postcard-sized computer, were it to be written in
such a "safe" language would also require a device with five times
the CPU, RAM -- and electrical consumption due to the overhead
imposed by same.</p>
<p>Thus for kernel-level or system-library-level code (or for that
matter execution-heavy applications) that are executed very
frequently and thus imposes said cost all the time (or at least a
very large amount of the time) the debate over "do it once and do
it right, even if it takes longer and requires programmers of
higher skill" approach .vs. "do it fast and let the computer catch
and fix the stupidity at runtime, imposing said cost in every
instance whether stupidity occurred in the coding or not" should
not, in my opinion anyway, end in the latter decision.</p>
<div class=3D"moz-signature">-- <br>
Karl Denninger<br>
<a href=3D"mailto:karl@denninger.net" class=3D"moz-txt-link-freetex=
t">karl@denninger.net</a><br>
<i>The Market Ticker</i><br>
<font size=3D"-2"><i>[S/MIME encrypted email preferred]</i></font><=
/div>
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