The topic of the Rust experiment was just discussed at the annual Maintainers Summit. The consensus among the assembled developers is that Rust in the kernel is no longer experimental — it is now a core part of the kernel and is here to stay. So the “experimental” tag will be coming off. Congratulations are in order for all of the Rust for Linux team.
Thanks for the detailed answer. Preaching to the choir.
The existence of the concept of ownership in languages like C++ is why I threw “moderately” in there. I agree depending on what you take that to mean, it may or may not do some heavy lifting.
For the rest, I’d divide it into hard facts (compiler messages are absolutely undeniable, in any circumstance) and things that can definitely be true depending on your personal use cases. I’m with you on this: for the vast vast majority of tasks commonly understood as software engineering, memory safety is a concern, and a lot, if not all, of your points, are valid.
I must humbly insist that it does not fit my needs, in the sense that memory safety is of no concern to me, and that the restrictions that a compiler-enforced approach imposes make me less productive, and, subjectively, also less enjoyable because causing more friction.
That being said, you may also not consider what I’m currently doing to be software engineering, and that’s totally fine. Then we’d agree entirely.
EDIT: also, there are very few languages less productive and beginner-friendly than C++ in my opinion. The proverbial bar is in hell. But you are talking to an unreasonable C++ hater.
I am a professional C++ developer with 20 years of experience and have worked in about eight other languages professionally, while learning and using a dozen more in hobby projects.
I agree with you here. The only areas where specifics are worse are package management in Python, and maintainability of large SIMULINK models.
That’s the sort of indictment of C++ I like to hear. It’s not just me then. I sometimes feel like I’m taking crazy pills with some colleagues who are super enthusiastic about it still.
But again, I’m stupid, I know I’m stupid, and C++ has way too many features and convoluted behaviours which are hard for me to remember and reason about. It often feels like it makes me think more about the language problems than the actual problem I’m supposed to work on. It may say more about me than the language, but I do feel validated with comments like this.