I have never written a line of code in Zig, but I can read it and derive a pretty good idea of what the syntax means without a lot of effort. The same cannot be said for Rust.

That’s you dawg. You probably have a different background, because I can follow zig code, but have no idea what a bunch of stuff means.

See samples

pub fn enqueue(this: *This, value: Child) !void {
            const node = try this.gpa.create(Node);
            node.* = .{ .data = value, .next = null };
            if (this.end) |end| end.next = node //
            else this.start = node;
            this.end = node;
        }

pub fn enqueue(this: *This, value: Child) !void { , !void? It’s important to return void? Watch out void is being returned? Does that mean that you can write !Child ? And what would that even mean?

const node = try this.gpa.create(Node); what does try mean there? There’s no catch, no except. Does that mean it just kills the stack and throws the exception until it reaches a catch/except? If not, why put a try there? Is that an indication that it it can throw?

node.* = .{ .data = value, .next = null }; excuse me what? Replace the contents of the node object with a new dict/map that has the keys .data and .next?

if (this.end) |end| end.next = node // what’s the lambda for? And what’s the // for ? A forgotten comment or an operator? If it’s to escape newline, why isn’t it a backslash like in other languages?

start: ?*Node. Question pointer? A nullable pointer? But aren’t all pointers nullable? Or does zig make a distinction between zero pointers and nullable pointers?

pub fn dequeue(this: *This) ?Child {
            const start = this.start orelse return null;
            defer this.gpa.destroy(start);

this.start orelse return null is this a check for null or a check for 0 or both?

However when I read rust the first time, I had quite a good idea of what was going on. Pattern matching and move were new, but traits were quite understandable coming from Java with interfaces. So yeah, mileage varies wildly and just because you can read Zig, doesn’t mean the next person can.

Regardless, it’s not like either of us have any pull in the kernel (and probably never will). I fear for the day we let AI start writing kernel code…

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Of course compiling something without checks is safe. If that’s your standard, we should write the kernel in JS, Python, Ruby, LUA or any other dynamically typed language since there’s no compilation time.

Progress means I don’t have to read blog posts in order to compile the kernel. Progress means I have a sane toolchain that lets me run, test, debug, manage dependencies, and even distribute my code and artefacts (documentation, compile output, …) easily. Progress means catching many more bugs at compile-time instead of runtime.

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Some people never do 🤷 I’m just wondering what people will do once BlueSky becomes the shithole we expect it to be. Maybe by then people will see the fediverse as the next place to swarm?

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Given how things are going, I bet you’re right. Maybe Musk will create a Bluesky instance (or whatever that federalized yet centralized thing is called).

@[email protected] in 5 years to check on the state of bluesky

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Rustaceans could just wait for unwelcoming C coders to slowly SIGQUIT…

Yep. Sometimes that’s all it takes for progress to stop being hampered.

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My guess, there’s a rust project out there reimplementing curl in rust and that’s where development efforts are concentrated. Probably replacing parts of curl with Rust is more work than its worth.

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Good grief. People like this Chris dude hold progress back. I’ll keep banging the drum (to be heard by not a single kernel dev, but anyway): the linux kernel need 90% of the Linux Foundation’s funding, not a mere 2%. There should be so many people wanting to be a maintainer that people who openly declare that they want to get in the way like this are easier to remove.

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Fuck dude, we need an alternative to the Linux Foundation that actually focuses on Linux itself, not every single project that somehow runs on Linux. The linux kernel is a pain to join as a newbie, it’s underfunded (2% of all the Linux Foundation’s funding goes to the Linux kernel), the development cycle and tooling is outdated, the major language © is a security risk, the maintainers are turning old and gray which brings with it the typical resistance against change, and so many other things.

I don’t know if a fork is needed with a new org surrounding it that focuses 100% on the kernel, or if something else has to happen, but the Linux foundation wasting money on shit like AI and endorsing Chromium sounds an awful lot like Mozilla. Mozilla lost its way a long time ago and the Linux Foundation might be going the same way too.

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