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You know a language has arrived when its toolchain ships as a standard component with operating systems.
Rust, Mozilla's language for safe and speedy systems level programming, has landed a prime-time slot in the next edition of Fedora Linux, according to the change set for the first public alpha for Fedora 25.
This doesn't mean that any system components in Fedora will be authored with Rust -- yet. But it does mean that Fedora users, many of whom are developers, will have easy access to Rust's ecosystem in their Fedora environments.
[...]Fedora's rationale for including Rust stems from both the language's growing popularity and its potential relevance to Fedora's user base. Aside from citing Rust's presence in the 2016 Stack Overflow Developer Survey as one of the most loved languages, Red Hat noted, "Mozilla is starting to use Rust in Firefox, and now Fedora's Firefox maintainers could enable those components."
(Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday September 04 2016, @09:45PM
I remember soldering my first board together, actually, before Commodore. So yes, I remember.
"how we all thought that Microsoft was a brilliant company that would revolutionize computing by bringing standard software to anything that could run their operating system?"
No 'we all' never thought that. If you did, sorry, but that just means you were severely ill-informed. Microsoft is a company that produced one program, a basic interpreter that ran on everyone else's operating systems. That's how they got the foot in the door, and what have they produced since then? I'm having a very hard time thinking of anything that was actually theirs. DOS was purchased for a song by Tim Patterson, WindowsNT was purchased more dearly by hiring away DECs OS team and ordering them to re-implement it with a Windows shell on top. IE? Spyglass mosaic code, paired with a trademark ripped from another company. They probably want credit (can that be the right word?) for "Windows" based on Windows1, but that was just one of many GUI shells for DOS, essentially a half-assed GEOS clone, and has practically nothing to do with modern Windows, nor was it in any way innovative, it was just a poor imitation of what came from Xerox PARC. Word? Oh, did I mention Xerox PARC already?
In all seriousness, MS hasn't created anything since Altair Basic. They just watch the market, buy out the turds that are doing well, and then they polish and market said turds. When they face technical competition they kill it in any way possible except for competing with it on the merits.
"Microsoft did exactly what we all wanted them to do in the 1980/90s and no-one can argue that they have been successful."
No, they did nothing that 'we' wanted in 80s/90s, nothing at all. If you measure success by money and power you can call them successful, they've certainly been paid well for the harm they've done and continue to do. They're very good at making money by abusing their customers, they've elevated that to an art form, but if that's your idea of success then we'll have to agree to disagree.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday September 05 2016, @07:15AM
Well, by 'we', I meant the majority. Until Linux, BSD and Mac subsequently entered the market, Windows was the only operating system in widespread use. It held a bigger share of the market than it does today. Yet, even today and despite that fact that we both dislike the company and its products, they still hold the market share. Windows 7 alone has more users than all OS/X versions in use today. You can say what you will, it is still a very successful company. One does not have to like their techniques and practices to realise that they are still a major player. They haven't produced anything innovative, but they have certainly marketed the overall package that, until more recently, has not even been challenged. Today, the Mac is also popular and Android knocks Microsofts products into the long grass as far as mobile devices are concerned.
All this is, of course, a detraction from TFS. It is Red Hat that is making progress - not in our eyes but certainly in the business world - and it is their employee who is responsible for pushing systemD down the linux users throats. And, again from their point of view, it is with a sound business idea behind it which has the potential to be a good move on their part. Rust has the ability, over time, to replace C/C++ given time. Of course, many will grumble and deny the new pretender but that doesn't mean it will necessarily fail.
As an aside, like you I started in the very early days. I built my first Nascom 1 from a bare circuit board and a bag full of components, following that with a Nascom 2 which I eventually converted into a Galaxy. Z80a, 4Mhz clock, and 8MB (I think) of RAM with a _5MB_ hard-drive! The Galaxy is no longer in use but is still in working order in my own Aladdin's cave. Those were the days .....
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]