Programming

I thought the US Government bought a lot of software in Ada, so I hope they continue with that.

I don't get why we're taking a swing at Linus here. The article only mentions him in relation to the rust for Linux project being slow going. But, it IS going and the US government has only stated that "you need a plan to move to a memory safe language by 2025 or you might be liable if something bad happens as a result of the classics (use after free/double free/buffer overflow/etc.)" but I don't think Linux would count it's free software and it does have a plan.

lol ok.

My friend from university sends me his Rust code snippets sometimes. Ngl it looks like a pretty cool language.

There was also that tldr reimplemention in Rust that is a gatrillion times faster than the original.

I really want to give it a try but I have executive dysfunction and don't have any ideas of what I could use it for.

If only it were that easy to snap your fingers and magically transform your code base from C to Rust. Spoiler alert: It's not.

How utterly disingenuous. That's not what the CISA recommendation says, at all.

But there is context to it:

The report on Product Security Bad Practices warns software manufacturers about developing "new product lines for use in **service of critical infrastructure or [national critical functions] **NCFs in a memory-unsafe language (eg, C or C++) where there are readily available alternative memory-safe languages that could be used is dangerous and significantly elevates risk to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety."

It's for new products that are very important to critical infrastructure and need to be safe as possible. The article writer seem not to be aware of this context:

Take Rust in Linux, for example. Even with support from Linux's creator, Linus Torvalds, Rust is moving into Linux at a snail's pace.

Because Linux is the biggest software in the entire world and they do lot of stuff their own way. Rust is integrated slowly for future new projects. It makes sense to move in snail pace. The government doesn't suggest the Linux project to stop using C entirely. The government "recommends" to start new projects in memory safe languages, if it is a critical software. That makes sense to me.

You see, people who've spent years and sometimes decades mastering C don't want to master the very different Rust. They don't see the point.

No, totally wrong. C programmers in Linux do not NEED to learn or master Rust. They just need to cooperate. The problem is, that some C programmers refuse to cooperate with Rust. They just want Rust to disappear. That has nothing to do with mastering the language. They refuse to make changes to their C code, so it can cooperate with Rust code via bindings.

After all, they can write memory-safe code in C, so why can't you?

Nonsense argument, and false too. If that was the case, why do we have memory safe languages? Clearly people make mistake, old and new. Besides Linux is not the only software in the world.

Converting existing large codebases to memory-safe languages can be an enormous undertaking.

Nobody says old code should be rewritten in Rust. Neither the government, nor the Rust programmers in Linux suggest that. It's not about rewriting code in memory-safe languages, its about new projects.

Either this article is a misrepresentation or misunderstanding. Or I misunderstand the article or government. I don't know anymore...

To address this concern, CISA recommends that developers transition to memory-safe programming languages such as Rust, Java, C#, Go, Python, and Swift.

If only it were that easy to snap your fingers and magically transform your code base from C to Rust.

guy_butterfly_meme.jpg is this unbiased journalism?

Well now I'm going to have to use it even more.

Why the swipe at Linus? He's been supportive of rust in the Linux kernel.