@lina@dougall While working on these userspace Mesa changes today, I did not hit a single GPU kernel driver bug. Not. A. Single. Bug.
This is thanks to Lina's phenomenal efforts. She took a gamble writing the kernel driver in Rust, knowing it would take longer to get to the first triangle but believing it would make for a more robust driver in the end. She was right.
A few months of Lina's Rust development has produced a more stable driver than years of development in C on certain mainline Linux GPU kernel drivers.
I think a better context is "There are approximately 1.5 million total lines of Rust code in AOSP across new functionality and components", but I wanted to keep the quote focused.
Meanwhile, I just had to try really hard not to leave angry comments under a StrangeLoop video, in which the presenter claimed there is no evidence that statically-typed languages prevent any real bugs from happening.
In the depths of a computer's core,
Where bits and bytes are stored,
Lies a tool that's often ignored
But without it, things would be floored.
It's the rust borrow checker,
A guardian of memory,
Ensuring that data is in the right place
And never causing miseries.
With each line of code it carefully scans,
Checking for underflows and overflows,
Preventing errors, saving the day,
And keeping the program in a flow.
So let's give a nod to this silent hero,
Whose work may go unnoticed, but is never zero,
It's the rust borrow checker,
A vital part of the machine,
Ensuring our programs run clean.
If you built a rocket and that rocket crashes, you wouldn't update the spec of the rocket to say "it is expected to crash after reaching 3000m altitude". But if you made a typo that says the rocket should crash after reaching 3000m altitude and somehow passed review, you wouldn't add a self detonation device into the rocket just because of this either.
Hah, I've pinged the person in question whether they're comfortable being quoted. I intentionally kept them anonymous so I didn't have to clear the quote in question (it's close to winter holidays, I thought they might be offline already), but welp, so much for that haha.
I'll reach back out if they get back to me with permission to attribute this quote to them.
The Rust community has long had a codified commitment to being a safe space and the language has benefited enormously from it. It's not hard to find people from trans, gay, furry, or otherwise marginalized groups leading initiatives to improve the language or manage critical open source libraries. When we allow bigots in, our community suffers, both in character and in output.
In Rust terms, the entire Windows system is unsafe. Do you mean that using Rust for Windows development is fooling yourself? I'm trying to apply Rust to a Windows app. Maybe it is a stillborn idea.