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One Of The Rust Linux Kernel Maintainers Steps Down - Cites "Nontechnical Nonsense" (www.phoronix.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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Wedson Almeida Filho is a Microsoft engineer who has been prolific in his contributions to the Rust for the Linux kernel code over the past several years. Wedson has worked on many Rust Linux kernel features and even did a experimental EXT2 file-system driver port to Rust. But he's had enough and is now stepping away from the Rust for Linux efforts.

From Wedon's post on the kernel mailing list:

I am retiring from the project. After almost 4 years, I find myself lacking the energy and enthusiasm I once had to respond to some of the nontechnical nonsense, so it's best to leave it up to those who still have it in them.

...

I truly believe the future of kernels is with memory-safe languages. I am no visionary but if Linux doesn't internalize this, I'm afraid some other kernel will do to it what it did to Unix.

Lastly, I'll leave a small, 3min 30s, sample for context here: https://youtu.be/WiPp9YEBV0Q?t=1529 -- and to reiterate, no one is trying force anyone else to learn Rust nor prevent refactorings of C code."

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[–] 15 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

For the same reason spoken languages often have semantic structures that make a literal translation often cumbersome and incorrect, translating nontrivial code from one language into another without being a near expert in both langauges, as well as being an expert in the project in question, can lead to differences in behaviour varying from "it crashes and takes down the OS with it", to "it performs worse".

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I'll add that even when you're an expert in both languages, it's common to see WTF's in the original and not be sure if something is a bug or just weird behavior that's now expected. Especially when going from a looser to a more strict language.

    I've translated huge projects and most of the risk is in "you know the original would do the wrong thing in these x circumstances -- I'm pretty sure that's not on purpose but.... Maybe? Or maybe now someone depends on it being wrong like this?"

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