I wrote an article about recent Rust for Linux drama, and I made an observation regarding Rust's ideology. My objective here is not to be confrontational but to seek further feedback.
I received a ton of feedback from the subreddit, but before writing another article about that, I've decided to reach to more Rust communities so I don't make the mistake of assuming the feedback I got from reddit is somehow representative.
I will respond to any feedback you might have, even if this topic is not considered appropriate for this forum (feel free to contact me through any medium).
I'm trying to be respectful here, even though some people might consider some of what I say in the article not to be so, I assure you everything is my honest good faith opinion.
Many of your comments have been deleted by you, and it seems this was done because of downvotes. But now I can't read your responses to various points. The responses that you left up don't look to me like you're open to critical feedback, but maybe I'm wrong.
I started reading your article, but it was so unfocused that I lost the plot and gave up. It also seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy to me. You might have better luck being more specific in the kind of feedback you're seeking. What parts of the article are you actually unsure about?
Can't argue, i think you haven't even learned rust before you started comparing it aesthetically to C and you kept complaining about how much of a headache it is,
if you want an aestethically pleasing language there is python for you.
Example
In my previous blog post I used a very simple example of structure initialization to show how C experts write C code (linux style using C99):
struct person {
char name[50];
int age;
struct person *boss;
};
struct person john = { .name = "John Doe", .age = 25 };
How does the equivalent look like in Rust? (I’m no Rust expert, so take this with a grain of salt)
struct Person<'a> {
name: &'a str,
age: u32,
boss: Option<&'a Person<'a>>,
}
let john = Person { name: "John Doe", age: 25, boss: None };
Although superficially that doesn’t look particularly bad, as a C person this makes my eyes bleed. Let’s leave aside the headache of specifying the memory management in the declaration of the structure in a convoluted way
"the headache of specifying the memory management in the declaration of the structure in a convoluted way", that's what rust is about, and of course if you don't spend enough time learning rust it would only be described as convoluted from your prespective. in addition, i think a good language in your opinion is a language that resembles C, a good solution is to spend more time learning rust not as a syntax but as a language and the theory behind every feature of the language.
What kind of feedback do you expect when the "point" you want to make is that no matter what arguments are given, the "other" side won't change their mind?
It's deceptive to say that you're open to feedback when inviting people to read your opinion, but your opinion is that you don't welcome any feedback.
Actual boomer here. Actually I boomed a long time ago.
What I find amazing is that so many discussions of the pros and cons of Rust end up generating reams and reams of debate framed in terms of politics, religion, culture, various degrees of some mental issue, age (boomer or not) and God know what else. With words like "cult", "fad" etc being bandied around. And so often they descend into vicious name calling, abuse and worse. It's all so much gibberish and nonsense, with a lot of psycho babble thrown in. Not at all productive and unnecessarily/disturbingly divisive. Why do people feel the need to do that?
Of course this has been going on in discussions of programming languages and other technologies for a very long time. For example see The Story of Mel but I don't recall it ever being so extreme and so vicious as I have seen wrt Rust. Why is that?
So please. Why write this? It says nothing about the situation that has not been said all over the net many times already.
I do have a couple of technical gripes.
Those two structures given in the C and Rust examples are not equivalent. As far as I know the Rust struct is usable on the stack or heap unchanged. At least my AI agent managed to show that.
Experience has shown that Rust can be used to create code as small and as performant as C. As an example this time critical, size limited embedded project Rewriting m4vgalib in Rust - Cliffle This leads me to be confident that Rust can be used in the Linux kernel. Which is not to say it might not need some tweaking to ease things along a bit.
Me, I have used more languages than I ever wanted to, from assembler and ALGOL to Rust through all the usual suspects, C, C++. Pascal, Ada, Javascript. I love them all. They all drive(drove) me crazy at times.
Many of your comments have been deleted by you, and it seems this was done because of downvotes.
Yes, I have a policy of deleting comments when they reach 10 downvotes for no reason. If all I write is a URL that links to a comment by Linus Torvalds and I get downvotes, it's pretty clear those are simply reflexive downvotes.
It doesn't really matter what I wrote in reddit, It doesn't even matter what other people wrote. I'm asking for your feedback on the article.
I started reading your article, but it was so unfocused that I lost the plot and gave up.
Not surprising.
Also, who is your target audience?
My target audience is people who are interested in the Rust versus C debate, in particular those who are more pragmatical but feel the Rust community is biased against conservative and centrist views.
I understand this article might not be liked by the Rust community, but there's definitely an audience.
You start trying to appear neutral but then just moved to see everything from one side. Rust can of course do everything required to write an operating system. That some Rust code is more verbose is no surprise. It's all about enabling the compiler to prevent all the horrible bugs that are so common in C, but impossible in Rust. You only tried to show the disadvantages which appears dishonest.
Christoph was'n affected at all by the Rust code and thus was in no position to oppose it. Linus made that clear in one mail.
That Hector threatened with the Social Media Mob was in my opinion completely unacceptable.
Besides that, I stopped reading in the middle of your post because it degraded into pure trolling.
"the headache of specifying the memory management in the declaration of the structure in a convoluted way", that's what rust is about, and of course if you don't spend enough time learning rust it would only be described as convoluted from your prespective.
Is that the only valid opinion? So everyone who spends enough time learning Rust must find its syntax clear? And everyone who doesn't find its syntax clear must not have spent enough time learning Rust?
What kind of feedback do you expect when the "point" you want to make is that no matter what arguments are given, the "other" side won't change their mind?
I'm not trying to change your mind, so it doesn't really matter if you are amenable to changing it or not.
The kind of feedback I'm hoping for is something along the lines of "Christoph is wrong in trying to veto that patch". I'm not saying that opinion is right or wrong, it's just the kind of feedback I would expect.
It's deceptive to say that you're open to feedback when inviting people to read your opinion, but your opinion is that you don't welcome any feedback.
95% of the article is not my opinion, just facts. And I'm not asking you to change my opinion, I'm asking you to state what you think about what was said for the record.
It's none of our frikken business. It's not our project and we don't work on it. (I'm guessing that is true of 99.999% of us here) We did not write the patch. We did not reject the patch. We are not the project maintainer that has to approve or reject the patch. Most likely we are not even Linux users that are or will be affected by the patch.
Since when did kernel development become a spectator sport? Why should we pick players and sides to cheer on or hurl abuse at?
So please. Why write this? It says nothing about the situation that has not been said all over the net many times already.
The feedback I've got from my audience suggests otherwise.
If you believe you've read an article with the same premise as mine, I'd love for you to prove it with a direct link.
Those two structures given in the C and Rust examples are not equivalent. As far as I know the Rust struct is usable on the stack or heap unchanged. At least my AI agent managed to show that.
I said you would need another definition for a static variable. Can your AI agent manage that?
Experience has shown that Rust can be used to create code as small and as performant as C. As an example this time critical, size limited embedded project Rewriting m4vgalib in Rust - Cliffle This leads me to be confident that Rust can be used in the Linux kernel. Which is not to say it might not need some tweaking to ease things along a bit.
This is a black swan fallacy. Just because there are some white swans doesn't mean all swans are white.
Not that it would matter because even if all C code can be rewritten in Rust as small and performant, those are not the only two considerations.
You only tried to show the disadvantages which appears dishonest.
I did no such thing.
Besides that, I stopped reading in the middle of your post because it degraded into pure trolling.
Not surprising.
So you missed the part where I explicitly say that Rust might be the best language for your particular needs, which implies that Rust might have some advantages.
I'm sorry, but the article is so disjoint and rambling I find it difficult to discern any "premise" within it. Please can you state the premise in a short paragraph?
Say Brian is a Chinese student, should you expect him to be good at math? Well, no, because that would be a misunderstanding of statistics, but most importantly: that would be prejudice. So the issue is assuming that because an individual belongs to a certain group, he must share all the characteristics that are typical of that group.
3 doritos later... (The very next paragraph, actually):
Progressive people would screech at the mere suggestion of a stereotype
And then
In fact, some progressives will go as far as to say that there isn’t such thing as a “woman”
Another opinion:
People on one side of the C versus Rust debate already know that stereotypes are often useful and not generally wrong, but people on the other side would protest at the idea of a “Rust guy” even being considered. Can you guess which is which?
And so on...
Who do you think is... I think the side that
When older developers say Rust is a “shiny language of the day”
In 2025 it’s common for people to state their pronouns in their bio
I mentioned that initially I thought Rust was a good idea
I think there is no hope of writing the most complex data structures of linux
And I could go on and on, but to be honest I don't see the point. By stating that your article is "95% facts" where to me it's clear that they are simply opinions already takes me back to my initial argument: You are not open to critical feedback because you see your opinions as facts.
In fact, some progressives will go as far as to say that there isn’t such thing as a “woman”
This isn't an "opinion", this is a statement of fact.
You may believe this statement of fact isn't true, but that doesn't make it an opinion.
With this you have demonstrated that I was correct: you have an issue with the facts mentioned in the article.
Actually, not only do I have personally witnessed progressive people saying precisely this, I can link you to a clip of a popular podcast where a prominent progressive philosopher said precisely this. And I can give you as many examples as you require.
You are not open to critical feedback because you see your opinions as facts.
That's exactly what you are doing here. In your opinion the statements of fact I made could not be true, therefore they have to be only my "opinion". Even when these statements of fact can be proven.
