Re: The Case for Rust (in any system)

--------
Antranig Vartanian writes:

> My point is: yes, we do need better languages. Yes, we do need memory-safety 
> and better tooling. But is Rust the answer?

Rust is what all the cool kids run right now, which they will deny,
claiming that Rust Is Simply Superior in replies to this email,
despite this prediction.

But as I said in an email a couple of days ago:  We should not
anoint some particular subset of programming languages or other.

We should answer the question "What is FreeBSD?" in a way which
does not contain a very short and controversial list of "approved
programming languages".

A pkg-based FreeBSD will allow the Rust people to write good code
for FreeBSD in Rust, and C, C++, Go, Lua, OBERON or Ada can freely
compete with them, without causing year-long slug-fests on the
mailing lists.

And if the INTERCAL people want to write FreeBSD kernel code in
INTERCAL, they get to maintain whatever it takes for their
compiler to grok the interfaces to the kernel, likewise for
any other language.

Poul-Henning


PS: I'm disappointed you did not mention Ada with SPARK.

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk@FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.