The author pointed out they also could’ve just called opensslprime-generate-bits1024 if they weren’t trying to learn anything. Rebuilding something from scratch and sharing the experience is valuable.
There’s two things going on in the exercise: 1) some introductory Rust programming; 2) some introductory math and crypto.
Maybe it’s just me but I think it’s better to separate the two. If you’re going to do a prime number generation exercise, it will be easier in (e.g.) Python since the bignum arithmetic is built in, you don’t have all the memory management headache, etc. If you’re going to do a Rust exercise, imho it is better to focus on Rust stuff.
There isn’t even any memory management in their code. And arguably the most interesting part of the article is implementing a bignum type from scratch.
The author pointed out they also could’ve just called
openssl prime -generate -bits 1024if they weren’t trying to learn anything. Rebuilding something from scratch and sharing the experience is valuable.There’s two things going on in the exercise: 1) some introductory Rust programming; 2) some introductory math and crypto.
Maybe it’s just me but I think it’s better to separate the two. If you’re going to do a prime number generation exercise, it will be easier in (e.g.) Python since the bignum arithmetic is built in, you don’t have all the memory management headache, etc. If you’re going to do a Rust exercise, imho it is better to focus on Rust stuff.
There isn’t even any memory management in their code. And arguably the most interesting part of the article is implementing a bignum type from scratch.