Torvalds Speaks: Rust attracts young developers to kernel

[@abagoflays5122]

Poor Greg

[@BudiSantoso-d9y]

Javascript for Kernel development. 😅

[@shivashankar28]

I am a young developer (25+), sorry to say I prefer C/C++ and python for numerical computing and prototyping.

[@PragandSens]

I am a young developer (21+) and I hate C++ with a pasion, not python, python is cool, also love rust and I'll write and maintain proyects in that language :D

[@2raddude]

No reason to be sorry! I personally love Rust (and Python!) but I think that some of the Rust community can be a bit... overzealous shall we say? C++ isn't going away any time soon, its still a great language to know. IMO the way forward with Rust is to encourage mixing it into existing code bases for specific projects that need the compile-time safeguards. In addition to some new projects being written completely in Rust. But if C++ is your jam, no reason to switch if you don't want to

[@pdgiddie]

Hopefully you know this, but C++ was firmly rejected by Torvalds after a short trial in the Linux kernel.

[@Batwam0]

You can still contribute to the kernel using C 👍

[@passerby4507]

I'm skeptical of anyone saying they like "C/C++" when the experience of writing in them is not even mildly similar.

[@mrcrackerist]

Prefer C over Rust and I have recently added Fortran to my game engine. I am 28 years old.

[@avwie132]

Okay, so….

[@TheMrKeksLp]

My condolences...

[@mba2808]

Good for you. Rust zealots are not the brightest.

[@skycaptain95]

Ah, a fellow depressed person

[@eyz-4]

@@mba2808 i see more people talking about rust zealots and cultists than i see actual zealots and cultists. i don't think i've ever seen one before but i always see people talking about them. maybe that says something.

[@schneefackel7053]

Alternate headline: "Kernel developers getting old and set in their ways, won't bother learning new language so shortly before they retire"

[@Tomab3]

I thought about learning rust as a language for my hobby projects (game dev) but i can use cpp which is more appropriate and also there are no rust jobs in my country and cpp is widely used, so… there is no point in learning rust currently (at least for me).

[@MultiMojo]

Sounds like an opportunity to evangelize development with Rust in your country !

[@thejonte]

I prefer Rust over C/C++. I'm 15.

[@yassinesadouki2117]

That will make u 30

[@phitc4242]

skill issue jk, I like C. it's more of a skill issue on my side. I want to learn rust but damn, C compilation is so fast god I love it

[@MR-vj8dn]

Is it because you like the easy path in life?

[@daniellittlewood8471]

This tracks

[@behrouzjavanmardi]

For now!

[@ThePandaGuitar]

I prefer C and Go over Rust. I would also take Zig over Rust. Rust strikes me as another C++ monstrosity in the making, too much gymnastics for little benefit

[@osagie6862]

I think the same way too but I’ll still use Rust tbh

[@vilian9185]

Van' be go because of it's garbage colector and zig is still in pre-alpha

[@phitc4242]

C is the best. HolyC is the bestest. and Rust ir pure rust. gets worse over time? or how was it? idk, u tell me

[@Phantom-lr6cs]

rust is a joke cause guess ? there's tons of safe langauges such as ada/free pascal when it comes to systems langauges but almost nobody uses them and guess whuy ? cause their syntax sucks XD so rust is anothe haskell like shit unless they will add some real things and allow use to use it without any < > _ & ' and shitty stuff like it has it will never became as popular as c++ is

[@tiranito2834]

I was called crazy by many, but finally, Linus himself admits it. Rust doesn't fit the bill of his criteria for a language the same way C does. If it were up to him, he would rather not even touch the language, not even with a stick. The only reason it made it into the kernel is because there are less and less C developers, and they need the new generations to keep maintaining the kernel once they are gone, so the only way to do so is to bring in whatever new cool kids language exists nowadays. If Rust had not come out, it would have been C++ or any other hipster language like zig or whatever. Also gotta find it kind of funny how much Linus has changed. For the worse, that is. He's "done" with the nvidia incident and now he goes to belittle the people maintaining GPU code. Cool, I guess.

[@vamastah1737]

Maybe there are less and less C developers, but there are even less Rust programmers. Personally I think it is mostly about forcing people to use a prioprietary language in the long term.

[@tiranito2834]

@@vamastah1737 Yeah, that is correct, but sadly in the long run there will be more and more Rust programmers if people are convinced that being forced to consume a propietary language is somehow good. And as you can already see, most young people seem to be susceptible to influences and will end up using Rust because its the new cool kids language.

[@RottenFishbone]

@@tiranito2834 I think treating languages as fashion pieces is pretty unproductive, they're tools. At this point it's almost hipster to start new projects in C. (Think thrift stores being hipster). I'm equally partial to C and Rust, they both have their merits. Rust is without a doubt inundated with a very cringe-inducing and overzealous culture. Disregarding it based on that alone is really throwing the baby out with the bathwater. That said, I still don't think its as great of a fit for Kernel dev as everyone is making it out to be. It is less expressive from a memory control standpoint by default and takes some significant extra effort to play around that. I *do* think it has a home in anything higher level than that because it dramatically reduces footguns and increases speed of development. As a side-note, calling Rust proprietary is a little disingenuous. The branding is trademarked, the source is MIT/Apache V2.

[@vamastah1737]

​​@@tiranito2834unfortunately it is all about marketing :( information flow is disturbed and biased towards positive aspects of technologies, negative aspects are neglected. It is quite sad that most people do not care about political side of technicalities. It will end up poorly. Speaking of Linus' change of heart - I guess he was forced at some point to change his communication style. Somebody noticed his social influence and said: "either you earn money and work for us, or you go out of business". I noticed similar influence on IT community in other projects and businesses, too. Western world starts to look like more and more like Russia on financial steroids.

[@LewisCampbellTech]

Zig seems like a language dyed in the wool C programmers would like a lot more than Rust.

[@Alsteraib985]

Nim is better ! Rust is not that great !

[@Phantom-lr6cs]

rust is another haskell-like shit langauge XD