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   Antranig Vartanian :freebsd: (antranigv@sigin.fo)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2024 21:55:25 JST Antranig Vartanian :freebsd:

   I've been following #FreeBSD-hackers for a while now, and everyone seems to be talking about #Rust.

   There are people who agree, there are people who don't and there are people like me, who wants to get answers to simpler questions, such as "Why Rust?".

   The Rust community seems to think that it's the revolution in Memory-Safe languages. Sorry, you are not. Far smarter people have been doing this for longer time.

   So, Rust? Ada? Oberon? Pascal?

   More about my rant here: https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-hackers/2024-September/003698.html

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     meso (meso@the.asbestos.cafe)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2024 21:55:07 JST meso

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     • miauz genyau
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     • cipote :bishrexual:
     @lucy @mia @antranigv @dragnucs @newt @teratology german = nazi thoughbeit
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     :blobcatflower: (methyltheobromine@netzsphaere.xyz)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2024 21:55:08 JST :blobcatflower:

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     • miauz genyau
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     @newt @mia @antranigv @dragnucs @teratology there's a rammstein quote in the nim docs and some people think they're literally hitler despite at least 3 of the band members being tankies..
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     :suya: (newt@stereophonic.space)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2024 21:55:10 JST :suya:

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     • miauz genyau
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     • cipote :bishrexual:
     @lucy @mia @antranigv @dragnucs @teratology last I remember, its author was accused of white supremacy and other cool things. I kinda wanna try it, but my roster of languages is filled.
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     :blobcatflower: (methyltheobromine@netzsphaere.xyz)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2024 21:55:11 JST :blobcatflower:

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     • miauz genyau
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     @mia @newt @dragnucs @teratology @antranigv what does this thread think about nim
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     miauz genyau (mia@movsw.0x0.st)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2024 21:55:13 JST miauz genyau

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     • cipote :bishrexual:

     @lucy @teratology @antranigv @dragnucs @newt this thread has me wanting to try zig again even though it’s married to LLVM and thus both not super portable and a distro packager’s nightmare
     
     it does get a lot of things right that C just doesn’t. for example, it provides different memory allocators instead of just whatever malloc happens to be, and it doesn’t just blindly copy libc semantics for everything. it gets rid of the fucking preprocessor and build system nonsense for selective compilation. it tries to help you avoid shooting yourself in the foot instead of having a standard library full of footguns purely for hysterical raisins.
     
     but it also has less cognitive overhead and faster compile times than rust, and first-class support for C libraries/exports which makes it one of the more practical alternatives to C.

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     :blobcatflower: (methyltheobromine@netzsphaere.xyz)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2024 21:55:14 JST :blobcatflower:

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     • :suya:
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     @teratology @antranigv @dragnucs @newt "a high-level assembly language" :akkogiggle:
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     cipote :bishrexual: (teratology@the.asbestos.cafe)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2024 21:55:15 JST cipote :bishrexual:

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     @newt @antranigv @dragnucs I honestly always wondered why people swore C was low level, even if it's commonly used for embedded programming
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     :suya: (newt@stereophonic.space)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2024 21:55:16 JST :suya:

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     • التنينوكس
     @dragnucs @antranigv tbh i'm not even sure "high level" and "low level" mean much. Note, that both languages I mentioned aren't supposed to be written by hand. Both serve as intermediate languages in a compilation pipeline.
     
     But C isn't a low-level language for that huge reason that the C standard imposes requirements and restrictions on C evaluation machine that resemble nothing like physical processors.
     
     So yeah, when people talk about C or Rust or whatever being "low level" or "portable assembly" (lmao!), they are probably full of shit.
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     التنينوكس (dragnucs@social.touha.me)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2024 21:55:17 JST التنينوكس

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     • :suya:

     @newt @antranigv So this means you agree with me. The level is a scale from 0 to 1000 and not a boolean.

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     :suya: (newt@stereophonic.space)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2024 21:55:18 JST :suya:

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     • التنينوكس
     @dragnucs @antranigv same could be said about C compiled to WASM. Again, it's a platform issue, not a language issue.
     
     If you want a truly low-level language, check out LLVM IR and C-- (yes, minus minus).
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     التنينوكس (dragnucs@social.touha.me)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2024 21:55:19 JST التنينوكس

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     • :suya:

     @newt @antranigv How the language runs has a an impact on this matter. Example, in Deno & node if the platform doesn't provide lowlevel stuff like sockets & filesystem, you really can't do much. Try building a websocket in pure JS on node only using ECMA script and none of node features. You will see that you are soon limited by what the platform allows you. While when you are lower level, you have direct access or near direct access to hardware and other ressources to do what ever you want.

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     :suya: (newt@stereophonic.space)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2024 21:55:20 JST :suya:

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     @dragnucs @antranigv i really don't. If JS was compiled to native code, it wouldn't be much different from Rust. It's an implementation thing.
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     التنينوكس (dragnucs@social.touha.me)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2024 21:55:21 JST التنينوكس

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     • :suya:

     @newt @antranigv From the article: 'Low-level languages are "close to the metal," whereas high-level languages are closer to how humans think."

     So being low or high level is not black and whites, it is shades. degrees, a gradient, a continuum. One language can be lower-level and an other low-level.

     Maybe if you compare JS with Rust, you will see that one is lower than the other.

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     :suya: (newt@stereophonic.space)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2024 21:55:23 JST :suya:

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     • التنينوكس
     @dragnucs @antranigv rust isn't low level. Neither is C.
     
     https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3212479
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     التنينوكس (dragnucs@social.touha.me)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2024 21:55:24 JST التنينوكس

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     @antranigv I will not develop my answer too much but rust is so popular now because it is fast, as fast as C, and is very low level. Pascal, is a bit higher level, and generaly not as fast as C.

     Also, in contrast to C, C++ and other, Rust has good scrolling and has a lot of programming concepts applied like very strict types, borrow checker, thread safety, etc. It also is very modern (not in calendar years but in design and features).

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     meso (meso@the.asbestos.cafe)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2024 21:58:05 JST meso

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     • miauz genyau
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     • cipote :bishrexual:
     @mia @newt @dragnucs @teratology @antranigv @lucy a bit
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     miauz genyau (mia@movsw.0x0.st)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2024 21:58:07 JST miauz genyau

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     • meso
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     @meso @lucy @antranigv @dragnucs @newt @teratology is there really a difference between nazis and tankies

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     :blobcatflower: (methyltheobromine@netzsphaere.xyz)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2024 22:12:21 JST :blobcatflower:

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     • miauz genyau
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     • meso
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     @mia @newt @dragnucs @meso @teratology @antranigv i wanna tag so many people and blow up this thread rn...
     meso likes this.
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     miauz genyau (mia@movsw.0x0.st)'s status on Friday, 06-Sep-2024 22:12:23 JST miauz genyau

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     • meso
     • cipote :bishrexual:

     @meso @lucy @antranigv @dragnucs @newt @teratology mostly seem to want the same things in practice except with different mental gymnastics