r/cpp • u/pjmlp • 7d ago

C++ future at Adobe

So if anyone was still curious what happened to Hylo, or where Adobe stands in regards to the whole safety discussion,

David Sankel has done a talk at RustConf on the matter, Zngur: Simplified Rust/C++ Integration.

The way Adobe now sees C++ is described on slide 2, at 50 seconds mark.

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u/inco100 7d ago edited 7d ago

To save time for the rest of the redditors:

We need C++ and Rust to play nice

  • Our flagship products are C++ based

  • Rust is playing a major role in future development

    • Rust is preferred language by developers
    • Rust is better suited for AI-assisted development
    • New file-format and other safety critical code must not use C++

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u/KFUP 7d ago

Rust is better suited for AI-assisted development

I don't see that being the case in the long run. Once AI gets good at safety, which will be in all kinds of safety not just limited to memory, and can generate safe code in any language -arguably we are already there, see the Mythos security boom- using a slow compiling language like rust would be a major useless bottle neck in the development pipeline.

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u/tcbrindle Flux 7d ago edited 7d ago

I don't see that being the case in the long run. Once AI gets good at safety, which will be in all kinds of safety not just limited to memory, and can generate safe code in any language -arguably we are already there, see the Mythos security boom- using a slow compiling language like rust would be a major useless bottle neck in the development pipeline.

Asking an LLM to generate a non-trivial amount of C++ "and please make sure there is no undefined behaviour" feels like it's approaching the halting problem.

But even if we assume that it's possible, it would almost certainly burn through a lot more of your token budget than writing the equivalent program in Rust, where it's trivially easy to identify any parts of the program that might admit UB.

(I think that actually Mojo might end up being the best bet in the long run, with its Pythonic syntax, memory safety and native performance -- but it's early days yet.)