[-] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 2 points 19 hours ago

You are saying "yes" to a comment explaining why the Google AI response cannot possibly be correct, so what do you mean "and [it's] correct"?

[-] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 2 points 1 day ago

This article somehow links to both the Reference and the Ferrocene spec, but still concludes that an official non-Ferrocene spec is necessary.

Why doesn't the Ferrocene spec accomplish what the author wants? He states:

In other words, without a clear and authoritative specification, Rust cannot be used to achieve EAL5.

What? Why can't the Ferrocene spec (and compiler) be used? Do Ferrocene and TÜV SÜD not count as "some group of experts"?

(Regarding the author's opening paragraphs, the Reference does make the same distinction about drop scopes for variables versus temporaries, though I can see why he finds the Ferrocene spec clearer. But that doesn't demonstrate that the Reference is useless as a stand-in for a specification.)

[-] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 5 points 1 day ago

That's actually not how any language has ever been written, though it's easy to get that impression from how much the C and C++ communities emphasize their formal specifications.

But in fact, both languages were in production use for over a decade before they had a formal spec. And languages with formal specifications are actually a tiny minority of programming languages.

[-] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 2 points 1 day ago

There is indeed a caveat in the introduction to the Reference that there may be statements in it that are specific to rustc. However, the authors strive to keep statements about the implementation separate from statements about the language.

The main reason there's not yet an "official" spec is that creating one takes enormous time and money, which are always limited resources. (Note that both C and C++ had no formal standard for over a decade after their initial release.) The Reference is "good enough" to make a formal spec not strictly necessary, and the existence of Ferrocene makes it even less necessary, since anyone who absolutely needs a spec can use Ferrocene.

[-] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 2 points 1 day ago

You can say the Rust implementation is wrong if it doesn't conform to the Reference. That is not the same as "you personally disagree with the behavior."

Rust's guarantees about the behavior of safe code are far stronger than anything C or C++ provides, with or without a formal spec.

[-] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 43 points 1 week ago

In the universe where the list is sorted, it doesn't actually matter how long the destruction takes!

[-] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 150 points 1 week ago

Reminds me of quantum-bogosort: randomize the list; check if it is sorted. If it is, you're done; otherwise, destroy this universe.

[-] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 50 points 1 month ago

Cool! Oracle, a company famous for making good-will decisions, and open to being "urged" into doing the right thing. 🙄

I suppose the open letter is a nice gesture, and I hope that the petition to cancel the trademark succeeds.

[-] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 43 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Unlikely, unless his view has changed substantially in the last seven years: https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2017/01/11/TheDarkPath.html

I think his views on how to achieve good quality software are nearly antithetical to the goals of Rust. As expressed in that blog post and in Clean Code, he thinks better discipline, particularly through writing lots and lots of explicit unit tests, is the only path to reliable software. Rust, on the other hand, is very much designed to make the compiler and other tooling bear as much of the burden of correctness as possible.

(To be clear, I realize you're kidding. But I do think it's important to know just how at odds the TDD philosophy is from the "safe languages" philosophy.)

[-] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 73 points 5 months ago

The logo and "join our Discord" text are more than half cut off for me. Is that the original cropping, or is it a client (Jerboa) issue?

[-] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 63 points 6 months ago

Not quite what you're asking for, but I wish Erlang had gotten popular before Java took off. I think that could have massively changed the course of "mainstream" languages. Maybe the JVM itself would have been BEAM-inspired. Heck, in an ideal world, the Netscape corporation and Brendan Eich would have created something based on Erlang/BEAM to ship with Navigator, instead of inventing JavaScript.

[-] BatmanAoD@programming.dev 53 points 8 months ago

It's actually quite amusing to me that Wikipedia is an authority on "reliability". It makes perfect sense, but can you imagine explaining that to a public school teacher twenty years ago?

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submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by BatmanAoD@programming.dev to c/rust@programming.dev

Almost five years ago, Saoirse "boats" wrote "Notes on a smaller Rust", and a year after that, revisited the idea.

The basic idea is a language that is highly inspired by Rust but doesn't have the strict constraint of being a "systems" language in the vein of C and C++; in particular, it can have a nontrivial (or "thick") runtime and doesn't need to limit itself to "zero-cost" abstractions.

What languages are being designed that fit this description? I've seen a few scripting languages written in Rust on GitHub, but none of them have been very active. I also recently learned about Hylo, which does have some ideas that I think are promising, but it seems too syntactically alien to really be a "smaller Rust."

Edit to add: I think Graydon Hoare's post about language design choices he would have preferred for Rust also sheds some light on the kind of things a hypothetical "Rust-like but not Rust" language could do differently: https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/307291.html

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BatmanAoD

joined 1 year ago