Wedson Almeida Filho is a Microsoft engineer who has been prolific in his contributions to the Rust for the Linux kernel code over the past several years. Wedson has worked on many Rust Linux kernel features and even did a experimental EXT2 file-system driver port to Rust. But he’s had enough and is now stepping away from the Rust for Linux efforts.
From Wedon’s post on the kernel mailing list:
I am retiring from the project. After almost 4 years, I find myself lacking the energy and enthusiasm I once had to respond to some of the nontechnical nonsense, so it’s best to leave it up to those who still have it in them.
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I truly believe the future of kernels is with memory-safe languages. I am no visionary but if Linux doesn’t internalize this, I’m afraid some other kernel will do to it what it did to Unix.
Lastly, I’ll leave a small, 3min 30s, sample for context here: https://youtu.be/WiPp9YEBV0Q?t=1529 – and to reiterate, no one is trying force anyone else to learn Rust nor prevent refactorings of C code."
I just don’t understand this. You get used to the syntax and borrow checker in a day or two. It’s a non-issue.
I didn’t. And I also dislike the methodology behind this way of programming.
But that’s personal and doesn’t make me want to trashtalk Rust during somebody’s talk about it.
I wouldn’t say that. For primitives yeah, day or two. But if you want to build a proper program, it’ll take time to get used to it. For my first few projects I just used clone everywhere. Passing by reference and managing lifetimes, specially when writing libraries is something that takes time to get used to. I still don’t feel confident.
Besides that I do like Rust though. Sometimes I feel like “just let me do that, C let’s me”, but I know it’s just adding safety where C wouldn’t care.
Unless you’re a functional programming purist or coming from a systems programming background, it takes a lot longer than a few days to get used to the borrow checker. If you’re coming as someone who most often uses garbage-collected languages, it’s even worse.
The problem isn’t so much understanding what the compiler is bitching about, as it is understanding why the paradigm you used isn’t safe and learning how to structure your code differently. That part takes the longest and only really starts to become easier when you learn to stop fighting the language.
I see that my previous comment is not the common reality apparently.
I’m mainly a C# + js dev of a few years, and I would love to see what precisely other people here are having problems with, because I’ve had a completely different experience to most of the people replying.
I tried for about a week: reading documentation, viewing and modifying example programs, using a Rust IDE with warnings for all my silly mistakes, the works. I couldn’t manage to wrap my head around it. It’s so different from what I’m used to. If I could dedicate like a month to learn it I would, but I don’t have the time :/