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- cross-posted to:
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- [email protected]
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It’s been continuously surprising to me how much hatred some C and C++ devs have for Rust. While Rust isn’t perfect, and plenty of criticisms aimed at the language are well-reasoned, the borrow checker is IMO the logical next step forward in “zero-cost abstraction” which is one of the strongest core philosophies behind C and C++.
The R4L effort seems to be structured sensibly, starting out with only allowing Rust code in (new) drivers. From what I can tell there’s comparatively little that has to be maintained upstream, but even that is encountering aggressive pushback.
I can’t help but feel like some devs have spent so much of their professional careers learning how to avoid the many footguns of C(++) that they fundamentally resent Rust for being a language which avoids most these problems, allowing fast code to be written with fewer bugs in less time and with less effort. This feeling is based on having written lots of C++ code for over 20 years, and having personally encountered devs who deeply resent Rust just because it’s not C.
The classic “I had it hard so you should too” mentality. I think it fundamentally comes from an animal desire for fairness - it isn’t fair that these old geezers had to put up with C shooting them in the feet at the drop of a bracket, while the new kids on the block get friendly (usually) compiler errors instead.
But I think if you don’t recognise that instinct in yourself and overcome it then you have failed as a human.
I’ll always remember the pushback to making xfree86 easier to configure (yes I’m old). Back in the day you had to edit a stupid text file to tell X that your screen could display 1024x768 and your mouse had three buttons. Then some upstarts came along and make it automatically detect that. The absolute cheek! Our ancestors have been practicing xfree86config since before you were a wee bebe! Etc. etc.
It’s a human condition.
And you had to figure out the bandwidth of your monitor (or more typically just make it up and hope nothing would break). What fun that was.
I don’t see how anyone could miss that.
Yeah… I suspect in 20 years this defence of C will seem just as incomprehensible.
Like many others, I thankful for the contributions to Linux. It is great to be able to leave proprietary systems. But the Linux kernel has a major maintainer and leadership problem that is holding back possible contributors. It quite simply isn’t living up to its potential.
The Linux Foundation seems to prioritise everything but Linux, the kernel still uses technologies and tools from another era (mailinglists, C), and from the outside the kernel looks like an uninviting, unwelcoming, and uncomfortable place to participate in.
With more focused allocation of resources, there could be lots more people making a living working on Linux. Imagine being able to intern there because of an internship programming. Imagine being able to be able to apply as a junior developer with little kernel knowledge to apply there and learn the ropes to become a fully fledged kernel dev. Imagine their being training courses and introduction sessions, kernel workshops, and live kernel dev sessions multiple times a day to cover every timezone where devs and non-devs alike could join to learn more about the kernel and how to contribute or get a job there. Imagine companies could talk to teams at the Linux foundation’s to help them get their drivers into the kernel or even be guided to affiliated companies to write drivers for their devices.
The kernel of course doesn’t just need devs It needs technical writers, marketing teams, outreach programmes at school, universities, government institutions, and it needs an arm that somehow talks to the public to get feedback on features they require or request and a way to get feedback from users (private and corporate alike).
Just imagine the possibilities if things we run and prioritised differently. The potential to spread opensource far and wide would be amazing. Maybe we can still get there and I hope we do. Having someone as motivated as Marcan being nearly burned out from internal conflict is regrettable.
Sure, there were/are still some bits and pieces of hardware support missing, but the overall experience rivaled or exceeded what you could get on most x86 laptops.
But then also came the entitled users. This time, it wasn’t about stealing games, it was about features. “When is Thunderbolt coming?” “Asahi is useless to me until I can use monitors over USB-C” “The battery life sucks compared to macOS” (nobody ever complained when compared to x86 laptops…) “I can’t even check my CPU temperature” (yes, I seriously got that one).
how many levels of dissonance is that?
I assume he meant Linux on x86 laptops, where I can confirm battery life is atrocious and support for random display things is also pretty bad. My laptop still wont do more than 30 Hz over HDMI (works fine with DisplayPort though).
- Not all x86 laptops are like you describe.
- Non-Apple ARM laptops exist. They in fact predate Apple’s move to ARM. Not only that, Linux was actually the primary target platform for many of them.
The bit you quoted from the post explicitly said “most x86 laptops”, not “all”.
even if he wrote “half”, he would still be wrong, and still suffering from multiple levels of dissonance.
I do get the irony, but I also do get where he’s coming from about users always asking for more.
And? I want more than my parents had. I want my kids to have more than me. How do you think that is going to happen?
Making a feature request is one thing but complaining isn’t helpful especially when they’re working on other things. It’s not like they’re sitting on their asses doing nothing.
Presumably by people like Marcan working to make it happen, rather than by random people complaining it’s not already done.
You think complainers cease to exist when the software becomes paid? You only need to look at gamers to find a very vocal bunch of angry people in that crowd. This is true for any enthusiast space.
Not sure if this was intended as a response to me?
A common fault is to believe only those who can do have the vision to see what should be done. Sometimes they’re even right. You can hear complaints of shortcomings or you can hear suggestions for how to improve a product. And, especially in a volunteer role, you can choose if you want to do it or not.
Marcan pretty clearly isn’t saying that feature requests wore him down. He’s saying that people saying “what you’ve built so far isn’t useful” wore him down.
(Plus, your original analogy about parents and children is completely lost by now.)
So many drama.
