I've been thinking about porting NetBSD or OpenBSD to the Rust programming language. I think NetBSD would be easier to port, but OpenBSD might be better from a security standpoint. Rust, of course, is pretty much the most safe and secure programming language ever developed. Rust and the BSDs were meant for eachother. Is anyone else interested in doing this? Would you be willing to contribute to such a project?
I'm not 'trolling'. I'm completely serious. Maybe you haven't used Rust yet but it's the next generation of programming. It offers unparalleled safety without sacrificing performance. That's the beauty of Rust's zero cost abstractions. Rust is what languages like C, C++, Java and C# should have been. It's still a young language but as more people learn about it we're seeing its usage skyrocket. Mozilla is already using Rust for parts of Firefox. I think we will see the same thing happen to most software pro
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Sunday October 22, 2017 @01:26PM (#55413513)
Rust is what languages like C, C++, Java and C# should have been.
That statement may be debatable for some languages. But I've looked at Rust. It can't do what C can. Sorry. You can't write low level code (and I don't mean something as high level as the Linux kernel) in it. Go ahead, try writing a bootloader in Rust. Let me know how it turns out.
The reality is that most good C programmers rarely have pointer fumbles. The fact of the matter is that lots of software we rely on (both open source and closed) are not written by even marginal programmers. There is this philosophy that if a good programmer writes the foundation the less skilled can follow along and product good software. It kinda works; to a point.
But even if all pointer bugs magically go away to equate this with "more secure" software is insane. The security hole landscape is vast. Really vast: Timing attacks, hardware flaws, surprising backchannels, social engineering. Yes, ASLR is a good defense. But claiming that Rust is going to fix security or just pushing it in this marketing style hype-fest is a detriment to just how hard getting security right is.
One can absolutely write low level code in Rust. There are examples available. Most parts of Linux are high-ish level but many parts are low level - or if doing actual interfacing with hardware isn't low level I wonder what you consider low enough. Microcode? That would be a table for hardware to interpret.
The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it.
- Brian Kernighan
Porting NetBSD to Rust. (Score:-1)
I've been thinking about porting NetBSD or OpenBSD to the Rust programming language. I think NetBSD would be easier to port, but OpenBSD might be better from a security standpoint. Rust, of course, is pretty much the most safe and secure programming language ever developed. Rust and the BSDs were meant for eachother. Is anyone else interested in doing this? Would you be willing to contribute to such a project?
Re: (Score:1)
The scary thing is that some Rust advocates actually say stuff like this without any sense of irony, not as a troll.
Sadly, similar to JavaScript, Rust has enough marching morons behind it to stick around for a long time to come.
Re: Porting NetBSD to Rust. (Score:-1)
I'm not 'trolling'. I'm completely serious. Maybe you haven't used Rust yet but it's the next generation of programming. It offers unparalleled safety without sacrificing performance. That's the beauty of Rust's zero cost abstractions. Rust is what languages like C, C++, Java and C# should have been. It's still a young language but as more people learn about it we're seeing its usage skyrocket. Mozilla is already using Rust for parts of Firefox. I think we will see the same thing happen to most software pro
Re: Porting NetBSD to Rust. (Score:3, Insightful)
That statement may be debatable for some languages. But I've looked at Rust. It can't do what C can. Sorry. You can't write low level code (and I don't mean something as high level as the Linux kernel) in it. Go ahead, try writing a bootloader in Rust. Let me know how it turns out.
The reality is that most good C programmers rarely have pointer fumbles. The fact of the matter is that lots of software we rely on (both open source and closed) are not written by even marginal programmers. There is this philosophy that if a good programmer writes the foundation the less skilled can follow along and product good software. It kinda works; to a point.
But even if all pointer bugs magically go away to equate this with "more secure" software is insane. The security hole landscape is vast. Really vast: Timing attacks, hardware flaws, surprising backchannels, social engineering. Yes, ASLR is a good defense. But claiming that Rust is going to fix security or just pushing it in this marketing style hype-fest is a detriment to just how hard getting security right is.
Re: (Score:3)
One can absolutely write low level code in Rust. There are examples available. Most parts of Linux are high-ish level but many parts are low level - or if doing actual interfacing with hardware isn't low level I wonder what you consider low enough. Microcode? That would be a table for hardware to interpret.