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by Mediterraneo10 3160 days ago
> Rust is --as the name implies-- most suited for close-to-the-metal code.

There are a lot of projects that really could be written in a high-level language, but they were started when C was still preferable due to the immaturity of higher-level solutions. I think it is sad that people, looking at these aging and unaudited C codebases, are thinking about rewriting them in Rust, when rewriting them in e.g. Python might make better sense. Very little Free Software needs to be so close to the metal, and it was just a historical accident that we got so much written in C.
3 comments
pjmlp 3160 days ago
Most of the FOSS software originated with the UNIX culture, where C thrives and the original FSF Manifesto suggested using only C to increase portability between POSIX systems.

So the historical accident was UNIX/POSIX taking over the majority of OS architectures.

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cies 3160 days ago
> I think it is sad that people, looking at these aging and unaudited C codebases, are thinking about rewriting them in Rust, when rewriting them in e.g. Python might make better sense.

I agree... apart from the Python bit. :) When deving software that is very big (LOC) or very widely distributed (FLOSS packages), then I prefer "well typed" languages that do not need a VM/interpreter.

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scott_karana 3160 days ago
But Rust is linker compatible with C and C++, meaning the typesafe rewrites can also be shoehorned into Python, just like its native extensions in C are...
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