A technical reflection on why the Linux kernel should continue using C instead of Rust, especially for legacy hardware support and long-term maintainability.
TL;DR: In which the author doesn’t comprehend that Rust can do everything C can do on the same hardware, and overstates the stability of C as a language, pleading sentiment over sensibility.
Just to play devil’s advocate. Until rust gets a production ready GCC backend or LLVM gets more esoteric HW support there are probably some platforms that cannot run rust. That being said… realistically I think by the time rust becomes a large enough part of the kernel for it to matter the issue will have been sorted out as there are already 2 GCC implementations of rust in development…
The author claims to be an expert in Rust, so at least they don’t come from a standpoint of ‘I hate Rust and everyone who recommends it’ which seems to be somewhat popular
TL;DR: In which the author doesn’t comprehend that Rust can do everything C can do on the same hardware, and overstates the stability of C as a language, pleading sentiment over sensibility.
Just to play devil’s advocate. Until rust gets a production ready GCC backend or LLVM gets more esoteric HW support there are probably some platforms that cannot run rust. That being said… realistically I think by the time rust becomes a large enough part of the kernel for it to matter the issue will have been sorted out as there are already 2 GCC implementations of rust in development…
The author claims to be an expert in Rust, so at least they don’t come from a standpoint of ‘I hate Rust and everyone who recommends it’ which seems to be somewhat popular