Linus Torvalds threatens to punish developers by putting Rust in the Linux Kernel
Linux would join Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook in usage of Rust as a disciplinary tool.
Speaking at a conference this week, Linux creator Linus Torvalds threatened to include Rust in the Linux Kernel if developers “don’t shape up real quick now.”
The Rust programming language was originally created in 2010 as a way to punish software developers who, according to the language’s creator Graydon Hoare, “really had it coming.” Since then, millions of developers have been disciplined using Rust — with companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook routinely flogging their programmers with Rust as a means to keep them in line.
“I really didn’t want to have to do this,” stated Torvalds. “But you all screw around too much. Nothing seems to get through to you. Maybe a little time with Rust will teach you a lesson.”
“At least it isn’t Perl,” stated one kernel developer. “My last manager disciplined us with Perl and RegEx. I mean, don’t get me wrong, we probably had it coming… but that was brutal.”
This was hilarious. I personally dislike Rust, but not due to the language itself. I really don't care either way about the language. The community of Rust zealots is what turns me off. They have this "holy mission" to promote Rust in all places at all times, and Rust doesn't fully accomplish its stated mission as it is currently designed. Ada Spark does, but no one seems to promote Ada Spark.
Rust sucks. Maybe do a show on that. I tried Rust but could get nowhere with its borrow checker (without speading "unsafe" everywhere) because I need to deal with complex in-memory structures accessable concurrently or in parallel. Rust's borrow checkers simply doesn't get it, and I was spending all of my time trying to make it happy.
I would have no problems doing the same in straight-up C++ becase C++ gives me the freedom to be "dangerous". I know that thread A and thread B won't access the same spots of an array -- because I programmed it that way! Rust doesn't know this, of course, so in my face it goes wagging its finger!!!!
And yes, I know I have to deal with caching and prefectching and all, but again, I know that and I can be "dangerous" and make that work out the way I want.
And yes, I was getting very annoyed by the Rust fanboys too. Sorry. I know many programming languages as I've been at this for the better part of 40 years. My career started off with writing an OS from scratch in C and Assembler. These noobs, these greenhorns know nothing and should sit down, shut up, and learn a thing or two. Then they may speak after they've been around the block.
I have pointed out that the automotive industry, for any of many sundry reasons, won't be buying into Rust anytime soon. C and C++ are trusted. They have their MISRA and AutoSar standards to get around many of the pitfalls in developing in those languages. Quite frankly, Rust, I think, should be a shoe-in for some of this development, but Rust must grow up first and become a real boy. It is not ready to play with the big boys.
Rust fanboys get irate when I tell them that. And that is entirely why I dispise them.
Maybe someday, when Rust becomes truly standardized and battle-tested, it may be ready to make inroads into such mission-critical applications. But not now. Not by a longshot.
For the same reasons, it does not belong in the Kernel. I am astonished that Torvalds, who hates C++, would be taking a knee to Rust. I guess he's getting old.