Hacker News Reader

Comment by softirq | Hacker News Reader

> Beauty is a useless concept in a programing language.

Maybe not aesthetic beauty, but readability in many contexts matters more than performance. Code that isn't readable hides bugs and can't be maintained (FYI Rust doesn't stop you from writing bugs into your code). A language like C or Go where you can fit most of the syntax and mechanisms into your head are simply easier to read and reason about than a language where you need a PhD in type theory to understand one signature.

> If it is not memory safe, does not support static typing with algebraic data types, and does not have null safety it does not meet those minimum requirements and is not suitable for use.

You'd better stop interacting with technology then, because the vast majority of it is still running something compiled from C. We're talking about control systems, life saving technology, technology that's running in outer space.

View on HN

> FYI Rust doesn't stop you from writing bugs into your code

You are committing the perfect solution fallacy [0]. Rust won't make you have no bugs in your code but don't conflate some number of bugs with a reduced number of bugs, a reduction is still a meaningful outcome, otherwise we'd still be writing in assembly.

> We're talking about control systems, life saving technology, technology that's running in outer space.

Indeed, that's why we should use more memory safe languages, because we are dealing with critical systems. Just because they were written in C does not mean that they should continue to be. It's like digging a hole with a stick, and when someone suggests a shovel or backhoe, you mention that all previous holes were made with a stick. There is no relationship between the previous work and what should be done in the future.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy#Perfect_soluti...

> You are committing the perfect solution fallacy.

Rust is also not a perfect solution. You have to prove that the benefits of solving for the bugs Rust can prevent outweighs the downsides of asking a bunch of C experts who are currently developing kernel subsystems in C to stop what they are doing and rewrite millions of lines in C in a language that has very low marketshare in the space and is far, far more complex in terms of abstracting over assembly. People write systems software in C not because they have a fetish for bugs, but because we do in fact still have to stay close to the hardware and not get lost in a minefield of abstractions.

> Rust is also not a perfect solution.

Yes? That's explicitly what I said.

C is successful despite all the bugs, not because of it. If there are newer methodologies that solve bugs, one should use them, rather than sticking to their "tried and true way" while suffering through segmentation faults. Already parts of the Linux kernel as well as Windows are being written in Rust, so if it's good enough for them, it should be good enough for those bunch of C experts. They also don't have to rewrite millions of lines, they can incrementally improve the codebase.

All this to say that even in your above comment you're still committing the perfect solution fallacy. You are still talking about how Rust is not perfect even though no one said it was, and you mention trying to convince all of those C experts to rewrite millions of lines of code when, again, no one said they have to do.

> Already parts of the Linux kernel as well as Windows are being written in Rust, so if it's good enough for them, it should be good enough for those bunch of C experts.

The C experts I was referring to are the subsystem maintainers and none of them are currently working on migrating to Rust AFAIK. So far the work in Linux with Rust has been a few driver rewrites. Keep in mind that there are subsystems like eBPF, io_uring, etc. that are under rapid development and are completely in C. I think if you really believe that kernel code should be written in Rust, you should start submitting patches instead of telling people that they have some sort of moral obligation to use Rust when you aren't the one that has to do any of the work.

You aren't being charitable. Please stop fussing it's rather immature. People have addressed your points, please actually respond to theirs.

It's not helpful to keep saying "look there still some people writing C" and use that as an argument for how C has somehow solved the problem where C programers regardless of how good they are ultimately write bugs that lead to takeover of the program counter. Rust makes the world better. If you don't want to pay the semantic price of that then fine, but it means you're okay with still writing horrible bugs. Some of us aren't. I promise Rust's semantics are better than C++ even though Rust has its rough edges and could be improved.

What would be helpful to your cause is to mention the examples of people starting to add tooling to C to solve problems people are solving with Rust, but without the semantic price of Rust.

> Rust doesn't stop you from writing bugs into your code

Obviously. It's not about Rust specifically. It's about accurately representing state which is extremely difficult to do in programming languages that do not have algebraic data types.

In Golang how do I represent that a type is either type A or type B and then in a type safe way perform logic if it's type A or perform logic if it's type B? Algebraic data types also allow for things like the result and option type.

Throw in the borrow checker which prevents a host of aliasing and concurrency bugs (not all). You are more likely to write correct Rust than other languages.

> You'd better stop interacting with technology then, because the vast majority of it is still running something compiled from C.

Thank you for another lesson I already know. I clearly meant I don't think it's suitable for use in new programs. People will still use it regardless as they are free to do so.

> In Golang how do I represent that a type is either type A or type B

generics provide one approach to this, but, in general, you don't -- you find another solution to your problem

> extremely difficult to do in programming languages that do not have algebraic data types.

And this is why people like me avoid ML based languages, type astronauts, and shiny new toys. You're misrepresenting inconveniences as fatal flaws when we've been successfully running all of modern society on kernels written in C for fifty years. Most of the kernel subsystem maintainers aren't even considering Rust as anything more than an experiment at this point. No one cares about ADTs and the perfect representation of state transitions in the type system when we have actual problems to solve, and we can and have been solving them in C.

> And this is why people like me avoid ML based languages, type astronauts, and shiny new toys

Instead you get things like this in GO

`var _ litestream.ReplicaClient = (*ReplicaClient)(nil)`

And every single variable is implicitly Type or null because obviously the alternative is more complex

> And this is why people like me avoid ML based languages, type astronauts, and shiny new toys.

There's nothing new or shiny about the ML family. And the growing interest in ADT's is about their very real advantages in representing state and solving real problems in a less error prone manner than C

Don’t argue with him. He is just and old man doing what all old man do: find excuses to not learn new stuff and convince himself that he didn’t have to do it

Yeah I find it really hard to see how they're being charitable. Just an old fart arguing for the continued relevance of curmudgeon-y technology instead of actually responding to the points being argued.

What people who still care about writing C are doing is starting to use tools to bring some of what Rust offers to C, because they acknowledge that avoiding entire categories of bugs is actually really good, despite which language you use. But... no mention of that here, it seems.

> successfully running all of modern society on kernels written in C for fifty years.

No we haven't. C is successful despite its major flaws (seg faults based on memory errors are not mere "inconveniences"). Microsoft mentioned for example that around 25-33% of all bugs in Windows were based on memory errors. They are currently cutting those down to 0% via Rust.

C is not what I would call a very readable language. I don’t think you could drop someone who newly learned C and have them be effective looking at glibc for example.

Because of the use or abuse of macros, different C codebases can look very different, and to learn it you have to figure out all the quirky macros. If people stick to standard C with few macros and verbose variable names, it's really not bad.

    void* (*identifier) (void*);

    typedef struct
    {
        /* ... */
    } my_struct_t;


    static return_type
    name_of_function (type *restrict argument)
      {
            int a, b, c;
            /* body */
      }

Just some examples of illegible syntax that's "standard" C. C is not a pretty language. It's small, but it's ugly as sin.

It's nearly impossible to actually parse anything more complex than a pointer to a struct in C because it wasn't written for humans, it is a relic of using a convenient recursive descent parser to parse C's syntax that we end up with `void* (*id) (void*)`...

Are you familiar with the lengths people go to to make C work in the "life saving technology" contexts?

Your argument is essentially: My thinking is clear and correct, I just can't explain to the compiler why it's correct, so just trust me.

People _very_ easily delude themselves into thinking their thinking is clear. When they are forced to spell it out in excruciating detail it often turns out otherwise.

Readability is a function of familiarity though. I have been programming in Rust for > 5 years, I find it to be an incredibly readable language, because I am so familiar with it.

> readability in many contexts matters more than performance

I completely, whole heartedly agree. Not just in many, but in most contexts.

And Rust or C shouldn't be used in these contexts. Use typescript or python instead.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com