[spiralpolitik]

The proposition that Rust is offering is not new. In the 90s Modula-2 was touted as "a better, safer way" of doing system programming than C. It failed to get traction outside of education because it failed to offer a compelling reason for people to migrate. Those that do not study history are doomed to repeat its mistakes.

In the example given it's possible to write a similar library in C to protect against unwanted side effects or bad API design. I'm sure several have been written over the years.

Rust is a great language with lots of improvements over other system programming languages, but that is not going to be enough to get people to switch. You have to show that it's good enough to be worth throwing away 40 odd years of experience and well understood best practice. Something that is going to take a long time and big public projects to do. If just being better was good enough Plan 9 would have been a roaring success and Linux (if it happened) would probably be a footnote in history.

C and UNIX have survived as long as they have not because better alternatives haven't come along, but because the alternatives haven't offered a compelling reason to switch. Unfortunately at least now Rust is falling into the same category.

See also: Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

[pjmlp]

Safe systems languages already existed before C was a thing.

Modula-2 is just one example.

Burrough B5000 was programmed in safe systems programming in 1961.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Systems_Problem_Orie...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEWP

"NEWP is a block-structured language very similar to Extended ALGOL. It includes several features borrowed from other programming languages which help in proper software engineering. These include modules (and later, super-modules) which group together functions and their data, with defined import and export interfaces. This allows for data encapsulation and module integrity. Since NEWP is designed for use as an operating system language, it permits the use of several unsafe constructs. Each block of code can have specific unsafe elements permitted. Unsafe elements are those only permitted within the operating system. These include access to the tag of each word, access to arbitrary memory elements, low-level machine interfaces, etc. If a program does not make use of any unsafe elements, it can be compiled and executed by anyone. If any unsafe elements are used, the compiler marks the code as non-executable. It can still be executed if blessed by a security administrator."

Sounds similar to modern practices? Done before C and UNIX were a thing.

C and UNIX have survived this long, because they go together as one, just like JavaScript is the king of the browser, C was the only way to go when coding on UNIX systems.

[pcwalton]

> Unfortunately at least now Rust is falling into the same category.

Rust offers one major thing that Modula-2 never did: eliminating memory management problems (also concurrency problems) with zero overhead. In the '80s and '90s it was not known just how dangerous memory management problems could be (use-after-free was thought to be a harmless annoyance). Not now in 2016, with every single browser engine falling to remote code execution via UAF in Pwn2Own.

[bogomipz]

Modula2 was from an era before the internet was ubiquitous and everyone had computers in the pocket. To compare lack of uptake of a "safer language" from a time when the internet and attack surface was so much smaller to now seems disingenuous. C and UNIX go hand in hand, nobody is disputing their worth or tenacity. I fail to see how a proposition that is not new detracts from Rust.

[sitkack]

Different language, but Modula-3 is actively maintained again. https://github.com/modula3/cm3

[pjmlp]

Modula-3 descends from Modula-2, although not directly.

Some of the Xerox PARC Mesa/Cedar researchers went to work for DEC (later Compaq) and created Modula-2+ with feedback from Niklaus Wirth. Which had actually used Mesa as inspiration for Modula and Modula-2.

Eventually Modula-2+ evolved into Modula-3.

Nowadays I would say part of its ideas live on C#.