Comment by grumblenum | Hacker News Reader

Comment by grumblenum | Hacker News Reader

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>the fact is that Rust has a larger and growing mindshare so this effort is unsurprising.

I think that is a false perception created by the dev-blogging community. Based on GitHub activity (https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/pull_requests/2021/2) Rust usage is declining (absolute numbers show little growth). Based on developer surveys (https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2020/) very few people use rust outside of hobby development.

I think the concern is that the core argument that "I think Linux should adopt rust for safety" is a bit dishonest, given that there are a large number of well-vetted alternatives. "I think Linux should adopt rust because I like rust for social reasons" would probably be more correct. That Google staff seem to think rust is good for the Linux kernel but not, say, Zircon, would be surprising if those same people actually believed that any legal rust program is safe and inherently trustworthy. "Embrace, extend, extinguish" wasn't that long ago.

I don't use rust so I have no money in this game, but based on the two links you provided, Rust ranks the highest among the "safety minded" languages. It ranks the same level as Ruby, Swift, Matlab or R in the Jetbrains ranking. That's incredible for such a new language.

I mean, neither Ada nor Zircon are even on the lists, so in terms of mindshare, they are clearly blown out of the water by Rust (from the evidence you provide). To discount Rust based on usage when the alternatives being suggested don't even make the rankings is also a bit dishonest.

In fact, the argument "I think Linux should adopt rust for safety" makes perfect sense. Here's finally a safety conscious language that seems to be embraced by a larger community, and even the big tech players. Instead we get people suggesting arcane alternatives that may be technically better, but have a snowball's chance in hell to become commonplace any time soon.

Zircon is a kernel.

That’s minor. It sounds like you agree with the rest of the post?

Rust was considered for Zircon. The only reason it wasn't chosen was that at the time Rust wasn't yet sufficiently mature for embedded. And it really wasn't.

In the meantime, Google makes extensive use of Rust in new components of both Fuchsia and Android and even rewrites some legacy components where it makes sense.

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