Live from Vienna, it's the Linus Torvalds and Dirk Hohndel show! This time, they're talking real-time Linux, Rust, maintainer burnout, and succession planning.
  • @[email protected]English
    64•7 hours ago

    People need to chill with the language fanaticism. It’s one thing to make jokes and rip on a language for its quirks, but at the end of the day it’s just a language. If you truly don’t like it, don’t use it. I’m going to take a stab and guess that there is enough Linux kernel source to go around to both the c devs and rust devs. Just be glad they’re not trying to rewrite it in JavaScript. 😉

    • @[email protected]
      11•4 hours ago

      The problem is that the Linux kernel is monolithic so introducing rust into it does have certain repercussions about downstream compatibility between modules.

      Right now the rust code in the kernel uses c bindings for some things and there’s a not-insignificant portion of C developers who both refuse to use rust and refuse to take responsibility if the code they write breaks something in the rust bindings.

      If it was pure C there would be no excuse as the standard for Linux development is that you don’t break downstream, but the current zeitgeist is that Rust being a different language means that the current C developers have no responsibility if their code refactoring now breaks the rust code.

      It’s a frankly ridiculous stance to take, considering the long history of Linux being very strict on not breaking downstream code.

    • EleventhHour
      17•6 hours ago

      I agree.

      I grew up in the age of c/c++ and then Java. I get it: people hate it and it’s time to move on, but jeez, folx, chill. It will happen in time, and there’s no reason to go all civil warsy about it.

      Things like this should not be rushed.