Comment by xavxav | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xavxav | Hacker News Reader

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> Honestly at this point I’ve given in and am now advocating that we rewrite every damned widget from scratch in Rust, because by the time we’re mostly done, my career will be winding down, and seeing that shit still gets pwned like, exactly as much, will be “good TV”.

Rust won't solve logic bugs but it can help bring up the foundations. So long as memory safety bugs are so pervasive we can't even properly reason on a theoretical level about logic bugs. The core theorem of any type system is "type safety" which states that a well-typed program never goes wrong (gets stuck, aka UB). Only then can you properly tackle correctness issues.

> Rust is cool because Haskell Lego Edition is better than no Haskell at all, and Rust is cool because now that it’s proven affine/linear typing can work, someone will probably get it right soon.

I don't understand the condescending remarks about "Haskell Lego Edition". I do agree that Rust has shown that substructural type systems work and are useful, and that they will be a 'theme' in the next batch of languages (or I can hope).

How much do I win if I can panic Rust without any “unsafe” whatsoever? Maybe I’ll index into some Unicode or something, haven’t decided.

And frankly I don’t see how it’s even remotely fair to call a no-nonsense statement that some things are simplified versions of other things with a cheeky metaphor “condescending”.

I could just as easily throw around words like “anti-intellectual” if my goal was to distract from the point rather substantially replying.

But Rust isn't remotely a simplified version of Haskell, and I'm not sure where you got that impression. It's inspired by several languages, but is predominantly a descendant of ML and C++. The only similarity they have is that Rust traits resemble Haskell typeclasses, but even there they are quite different in semantics and implementation.

Question mark operator is bind for Result? Derives show? Run that argument past someone who can’t quote chapter and verse.

I like Rust in a lot of ways, I write a fuckload of it and I get value from doing so. Not “praise the lord” value, but real value.

But the attitude is an invitation to getting made fun of. It’s absurdly intellectually dishonest when Rust-as-Religion people actively hassle anyone writing C and then get a little precious when anyone mentions Haskell and then extremely precious when they step on the landmine of the guy who likes Rust enough to know the standard, the compiler, the build tool, the people who wrote the build tool, and generally enough to put it in its place from a position of knowledge.

SSH servers? Yeah, I’d go with Rust. Web browsers? In a perfect world, lot of work. Even for Mozilla who timed the fuck out on it.

Everything ever so no security problem ever exists ever again? Someone called it the “green energy of software security” on HN like this year.

It’s not the coolest look that one of my “blow off some steam” hobbies is making those people look silly, but there are worse ways to blow off some steam.

It sounds like you’re saying, you spent a lot of time focused on learning rust, so now you like to discuss its shortcomings as abrasively as you can for sport.

Upthread I’ve already surrendered. There are certain gangs you just don’t pick a fight with. I’m a slow learner in some ways but I get the message. Got it, learning Rust nuts and bolts only makes it worse to say anything skeptical about it.

Your argument seems to mostly boil down to "Rust isn't magic", which nobody is really arguing. It does help eliminate one class of really nasty bugs, which tend to repeatedly show up in a lot of massive security hacks, and which generally everyone would like to see eliminated. Therefore: use Rust.

Comparisons to other languages like Haskell don't really work, since they don't fit in the same space nor have the same goals as Rust or C.

Do I really need to do the search for comparisons to solar panels or cancer drugs, or does that sort of scan?

Nearly every answer you gave in this thread doesn't address the parent comments point at all.

It seems you are just raging and reading subtext and drama where there is none.

Further up someone mentioned Rust and Haskell aren't similar and you go on about Rust-religion and where to use Rust. Why don't you just address the point? "Lego" is also not a synonym or metaphor for simplified.

Panicking in Rust isn't a memory-unsafe operation.

A crash is signficiantly better than corruption. If you can force an `unwrap` you can cause a denial of service but with corruption, all bets are off.

lol if "shit still gets rocked" means "programs exit safely but unexpectedly sometimes" we're on very different pages

I'm searching your posts in this topic trying to find something of value and coming up short. You assert that you know rust, and therefor your opinions have merit, but... lots of people know rust and disagree. But somehow your opinions are More Right and the others are just religious Rust shills.

I don't think you know what you're talking about honestly. If you want to pick fights on HN that's cool, we all get that urge, but you're really bad at it.

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