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Pleasantly surprised by Linus response. IIRC his attitude to C++ was that it should be refused if only to keep C++ programmers out.

discuss

xvilka|5 years ago

Rust is well designed modern and concise language with sound type system, while C++ isn't. The difference is huge and obvious.

hellofunk|5 years ago

Except that one of Linus' most vocal offenses on C++ was due to operator overloading and how basic, seemingly native things like + can actually do a lot of hidden stuff unknown to the programmer. He must have softened on this since Rust offers the same facilities for operator overloading.

https://doc.rust-lang.org/stable/rust-by-example/trait/ops.h...

mushishi|5 years ago

Could you give me a pointer to a discussion of type soudness in Rust? I recently watched perhaps 3 years old video about Rust where Simon Peyton-Jones asked about this, and Niko Matsakis answered it was ongoing work back then.

Couldn't find anything proper by googling.

pjmlp|5 years ago

Linus nowadays also uses Qt, so.

for_xyz|5 years ago

His attitude towards C++ also changed when using it for his side project [1].

Initially he started with C and GTK+ and later migrated to C++ and QT Framework.

[1] https://subsurface-divelog.org/

josefx|5 years ago

I think that was after others took over the UI development. The back end of that program also was still C as far as I remember from their presentation and the move was mostly motivated by the GTK community, the documentation and different priorities on cross platform support.

globular-toast|5 years ago

Did he have an "attitude" about C++ in general? I thought he only commented on it with respect to operating system development. He did make much more general statements about Java, though.

agumonkey|5 years ago

Did he talk about his thoughts precisely ?

stjohnswarts|5 years ago

I love how the bugtracker on that is "check out our mailing list" :D

mrmonkeyman|5 years ago

[deleted]

kevingadd|5 years ago

Perhaps the possibility of rust improving kernel security/robustness makes the idea of rust integration seem like it carries its own weight, where C++ has more downsides (perceived or real) and fewer upsides.

Rust's history/origins - loosely, being designed to allow replacing Mozilla's C/C++ with safer Rust that performs well - feel like a good fit for kernel drivers even if the core kernel bits will always be C.

buster|5 years ago

Yes, very much so. Not even only in the context of Rust but the insight, to fail fast, integrate early and do work in the open, instead of some hidden work, failing after a long time, when revealed.