It is hard to think in and see through the eyes from a Kernel core maintainer, if you don’t do this kind of stuff at this level. Instead enforcing style guides, looking for edge cases and unexpected issues because C allows to do anything must be terrifying. Part of this “nonsense” goes away using a language that is designed to handle this better. And you know, learning a new language with features you always wanted to have in C might be exciting too, I don’t know. I can imagine Rust being more fun than C in the Kernel for some, so this is not a wild take or anything like that.
I think the most exhausting part of Rust was two fold: a) the language was not designed to be used in the Kernel, they needed to update and discuss after real world usage, and b) the push back from C developers who either didn’t understand Rust or think its bad for the Kernel. The childhood illnesses of Rust in Linux is seemingly over.
It is hard to think in and see through the eyes from a Kernel core maintainer, if you don’t do this kind of stuff at this level. Instead enforcing style guides, looking for edge cases and unexpected issues because C allows to do anything must be terrifying. Part of this “nonsense” goes away using a language that is designed to handle this better. And you know, learning a new language with features you always wanted to have in C might be exciting too, I don’t know. I can imagine Rust being more fun than C in the Kernel for some, so this is not a wild take or anything like that.
I think the most exhausting part of Rust was two fold: a) the language was not designed to be used in the Kernel, they needed to update and discuss after real world usage, and b) the push back from C developers who either didn’t understand Rust or think its bad for the Kernel. The childhood illnesses of Rust in Linux is seemingly over.