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Ladies and gentlemen, the C programming language. It’s a classic. It is blindingly, quicksilver fast, because it’s about as close to the bone of the machine as you can get. It is time-tested and ubiquitous. And it is terrifyingly dangerous.
The author's biggest issue with the C language seems to be security holes:
If you write code in C, you have to be careful not to introduce subtle bugs that can turn into massive security holes — and as anyone who ever wrote software knows, you cannot be perfectly careful all of the time.
The author claims that the Rust language is a modern answer to these issues and should replace C (and C++). It does look that Rust can run C code, so it looks like an interesting proposition. What do Soylent's coders think about this?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Friday May 08 2015, @09:59PM
This was a carefully thought out feature which permits high performance without a run-time or GC overhead. It also allows for deterministic behaviour which is critical for hard real-time systems. You want GC? Use a language that provides one.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2015, @10:31PM
Is there any proof that Rust code actually performs well?
I know that the Rust compiler, which itself consists of a lot of Rust code, is really fucking slow. Although it builds on LLVM, I don't think that LLVM is to blame, because Clang uses it and Clang is still really damn fast when compiling C++ code, and C++ compilers are generally among the slowest compilers out there.
If Rust is so fast, then why is perhaps the biggest project written in Rust so far so goddamn slow?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2015, @12:29AM
Is there any proof that Rust code actually performs well?
According to the posts above it rusts very well. I guess no one can be surprised that it lived up to its name.
(Score: 3, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Saturday May 09 2015, @01:10AM
determinism!=fast
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2015, @04:34AM
That's total bullshit. C++ offers determinism, yet it's way fucking faster than Rust is.
Your comparison only holds true for Rust. It does hold true for C++. That means that Rust is flawed.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Saturday May 09 2015, @05:25PM
What's bullshit? I pointed out that GC isn't determinism friendly. Duh.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2015, @11:13PM
You didn't fucking mention garbage collection at all.
You said determinism is slow, as an excuse for Rust being really fucking slow. But C++ offers determinism, and it's blazing fast.
The problem is that Rust is shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2015, @04:40AM
Rust supporters never admit that the problem may just be with Rust. We always hear excuses, denial, and outright falsehoods from them.
Determinism is very fast in languages like C++ and Ada. It's only slow in Rust, because Rust is shit!
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Saturday May 09 2015, @01:36AM
Also, Rust is still a work in progress. The latest version is still in beta.