TWiR quote of the week

[Michael-F-Bryan]

From Concerns about embedded real time linux using rust

@parasyte

Since it hasn't been said before, there is an important distinction that needs to be addressed. For anyone who has been doing embedded work for any length of time and hasn't yet been exposed to Rust, the only thing that can really be said is that the language is entirely unlike everything you've experienced before. There is just nothing comparable, and the only way to rationalize questions like why use Rust at all is to put some honest effort into learning and using it.

Hearing things like "it's a bit like C++ except it's memory safe and thread safe, and it's actually practical to build kernels with it" will not sound convincing. You have to see it to believe it.

It's as if you've spent an entire career writing assembly, and one day you hear something or other about a brand-new programming language claiming to be a "portable assembler" called C. It sounds too good to be true. And then the years pass, and all of the mystery and disbelief gives way to obviousness and precision engineering. That's sort of how it is when going from C to Rust.