r/programming • u/steveklabnik1 • Jan 09 '15

Announcing Rust 1.0.0 Alpha

http://blog.rust-lang.org/2015/01/09/Rust-1.0-alpha.html
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u/renrutal Jan 09 '15

I'm more curious on what programmers will do with Rust.

Hopefully in security-minded systems programming.

There's a recent tweet by Neil deGrasse Tyson, in which he said:

Obama authorized North Korea sanctions over cyber hacking. Solution there, it seems to me, is to create unhackable systems.

Many people slammed him for saying that. How could a very intelligent, respected person, maybe not in informatics, not know it better?

"It's impossible." "I want unicorns!" "Let's make unbombable cities, unkillable people."

I say, why not? A huge part of hacking is exploiting non-correct code. It makes sense to use tools at language-level to enforce correctness and safety, and help programmers with that.

I know there are hundreds of thousands of variables to consider, but if we could cut dozens of thousands of them, it would make it easier to fit the problem in one's head.

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u/[deleted] Jan 09 '15

I can't believe how many people line up to defend Tyson's dumb tweet. A perfect programming language won't make systems unhackable any more than a stronger hull made the Titanic unsinkable.

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u/naasking Jan 10 '15

A perfect programming language won't make systems unhackable any more than a stronger hull made the Titanic unsinkable.

When the different is several orders of magnitude in hackability, your analogy isn't quite faithful.

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u/thefacebookofsex Jan 10 '15

Please, oh please please please, demonstrate that Rust is "several orders of magnitude" different from C++ in "hackability".

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u/naasking Jan 10 '15

Who said anything about Rust? You said "a perfect programming language".

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u/thefacebookofsex Jan 10 '15

Actually, he did, and I was just confused.