It's remarkable, though, that it's taken 40 years to make much head way in replacing C.
There's still a lot of C code out there, and a lot of new C code still being written.
There's still a lot of C code out there, and a lot of new C code still being written.
I don't agree: it's been a long process, but the trend is unmistakable. It's hard to remember now, but in the early '90s C and C++ were completely dominant. Nowadays they're much more specialized: you're as likely to build your company on Java or even Python/Ruby as you are to build it on C++. People talk about how it's hard to hire C++ engineers nowadays, while in the '90s "C++ engineer" was pretty much synonymous with "programmer". And so on.
The interesting question is what will mobile devices, the IoT and embedded devices in general be programmed in? C and C++ are popular choices today, so the trend is not really "unmistakable".
Everything else usually has other languages available as well, one just needs to search for what is out there.
Some of today's dominant platforms are developed mostly in Java (see Android), and web development targets the LAMP stack. This means that the business is centered in ventures that exclude most languages, not because there is technical merit on other alternatives.
I'm sure it's possible to gather some individuals that are more than willing to badmouth Java and Python with a passion with the same ease we see here people complaining about C.
Rust is unsuitable as a replacement for C because its memory management is poorly thought out (ie. its a joke). Here's the relevant paragraphs from the Rust FAQ. Really?
"Rust avoids the need for GC through its system of ownership and borrowing, but that same system helps with a host of other problems, including resource management in general and concurrency.
For when single ownership does not suffice, Rust programs rely on the standard reference-counting smart pointer type, Rc, and its thread-safe counterpart, Arc, instead of GC.
We are however investigating optional garbage collection as a future extension. The goal is to enable smooth integration with garbage-collected runtimes, such as those offered by the Spidermonkey and V8 JavaScript engines. Finally, some people have investigated implementing pure Rust garbage collectors without compiler support."
> They really don't know what direction to go.
Does the presence of libraries for refcounting or even GC in C (most famously Boehm) mean that C has an incoherent story around memory?
> Rust's multiple methods of memory management makes it strange, at best,
> for programmers to decide how to build a program or an API.
> Are the owners of Rust planning on adding a GC? Really?
The second is something like Bohem: if a system wants to use GC for some reason, they have an interface to add a GC'd type. But Rust proper, the language, will not have GC. It's completely contradictory to the goals of the language.
To address this specifically: Current plans for Rust are mostly along the lines of adding the bare necessities in the stdlib to allow GC implementations to be written.
There are mostly-niche use-cases for having a GC in Rust. I've written some of the motivation here[1] (note that that blog post is about a pure library GC independent of Rust, which is different from what is planned; but the motivations are similar).
One major use case is if you want to talk to a language which has a GC. Say you're writing a native extension to a Ruby or Node and want to deal with the GCd types within Rust code in a safe way without pausing the GC. Or if you're writing an interpreter for a GCd language. Or you're writing some code that deals with complicated cyclic graph-like datastructures.
These are all pretty niche, but the workarounds in these cases aren't pretty so it's nice to have some form of GC capabilities in Rust. This is not a price you pay by default, and it's not something that affects anyone but the people who need these types. It will probably take the form of some low level APIs that use LLVM stack rooting to collect roots, and some traits in the stdlib, which can be used by an independent GC library (not part of the stdlib) or a language bindings library (also not part of the stdlib).
Rust itself will never get a GC as part of the language.
[1]: http://manishearth.github.io/blog/2015/09/01/designing-a-gc-...
This is a library thing, not a language thing.
If single ownership is enough for you, go ahead and use it. But if you need a different memory management strategy, that is available too.
Rust, the language, provides a single clear memory management strategy. It also provides the ability to design your own abstractions for different strategies, and implements some of these in the stdlib.
C/C++ have refcounting and GC libraries too. Does that make them a joke?
Rust is very promising language, but unless you plan to write everything from scratch, you have to depend on 3rd party driver implementations for most stuff. Databases for example. There isn't a single database vendor that has Rust drivers.
BTW I am not implying that is Rust's fault, actually I can't think a syntax that would make it less verbose, and I am a huge Rust fan.
something like C::function_from_c() is one option
I wasn't aware of the tools that do this automatically. Just found one and it looks promising.
Rust is a better choice, and it's designed with this in mind. It's still young, though, and I think there might be some as-yet-unsolved issues (these are things I've vaguely heard of and could be totally off-base) like binary size, ease of dealing with raw pointers, etc.
If I was doing this sort of programming for a personal project, I'd probably try using Rust, because I like it.
Dunno about Swift, though IIRC the current reference implementation may also currently rely on GC.
> like binary size, ease of dealing with raw pointers, etc
As for raw pointers, they're exactly as capable as raw pointers in C, though they're deliberately more verbose as well, because even in embedded contexts one should be favoring references over raw pointers, since references are still fully checked for safety even in embedded mode and yet are represented by raw pointers at runtime and hence have zero runtime overhead.
A lot of the things rust brings to the table aren't always relevant on embedded platforms. Dynamic memory allocation on embedded is the exception, not the rule. Everything is statically allocated, so memory management is relatively simple -- everything sticks around forever.
The things that make C/C++ good for embedded are sorta what make it unfortunate for general purpose use. The things that make Rust/Go/Swift good for general purpose use make it unfortunate for embedded use.
> GC languages
> Dynamic memory allocation on embedded is the exception
Right, I was referring to Go and Swift with the comment about GC. Since rust didn't have that problem, I mentioned why major adoption might not be forthcoming.
I understand that you can statically allocate all you want in Rust, but it's memory safety, particularly with regards to object ownership is one of its major selling points. Object ownership and lifetimes are trivial when everything is static.
The other arguable selling point to rust is its standard library, but much like C++ the standard library would be left aside in most embedded applications.
So it doesn't buy you much of anything at all, but it takes some work to setup, plus you are fighting the momentum that C/C++ has. Unless there is some other compelling reason to use it, I don't expect much adoption.
In that case, you can simply not use the dynamic allocation features of Rust, just as you can simply not use malloc() in C.
Oberon for ARM Cortex-M4, Cortex-M3 Microcontrollers and Xilinx FPGA Systems
http://www.astrobe.com/default.htm
Pascal and Basic for lots of micro and pico-processors
http://www.mikroe.com/compilers/
Ada,
http://www.ghs.com/products/ada_optimizing_compilers.html
http://www.ptc.com/developer-tools/apexada
Java for MCUs