Re: Safer Linux Kernel Modules Using the D Programming Language
On Sunday, 8 January 2023 at 03:58:43 UTC, Siarhei Siamashka wrote: On Sunday, 8 January 2023 at 03:18:27 UTC, monkyyy wrote: On Sunday, 8 January 2023 at 02:15:27 UTC, areYouSureAboutThat wrote: C is not just a programming language anymore. It's a complete (and very diverse) ecosystem. No progress has been made for decades but that doesn't mean progress is impossible. C has a very large and diverse ecosystem exactly thanks to "no progress". I was referring to all programming languages and computer science
Re: Safer Linux Kernel Modules Using the D Programming Language
On Sunday, 8 January 2023 at 03:18:27 UTC, monkyyy wrote: On Sunday, 8 January 2023 at 02:15:27 UTC, areYouSureAboutThat wrote: C is not just a programming language anymore. It's a complete (and very diverse) ecosystem. No progress has been made for decades but that doesn't mean progress is impossible. C has a very large and diverse ecosystem exactly thanks to "no progress". Each and every compatibility breaking change in the language flushes a part of the ecosystem down the toilet. So the recipe for success is to get most of the things right from the very beginning (this is partly based on skill and partly based on luck). And then try to avoid breaking changes as much as possible. C language is a great example of this.
Re: Safer Linux Kernel Modules Using the D Programming Language
On Sunday, 8 January 2023 at 02:15:27 UTC, areYouSureAboutThat wrote: C is not just a programming language anymore. It's a complete (and very diverse) ecosystem. No progress has been made for decades but that doesn't mean progress is impossible. Maybe the academia will take note that imperative code with goto, void* and static types are nessary and stop making meme language. The unix stack was fair from prefect and the api of shells and stdin/out should be typed and semi graphical, hot take.
Re: Safer Linux Kernel Modules Using the D Programming Language
On Saturday, 7 January 2023 at 23:27:02 UTC, Siarhei Siamashka wrote: There are attempts to rewrite it in safer programming languages ;-) Such as https://github.com/Byron/gitoxide I'd love to hear Lord Linus's thought on this. Let's see if the alternative implementations turn out to be good enough and allow to eventually retire C at least for this particular task. Survival for the fittest. Yes, as you say, 'survival of the fittest' also applied in programming languages ;-) That certainly says something about C. Doesn't the D code annotated as `@system` already provide the same flexibility and control as C? If not, then what is missing? What missing, is that 'still' nothing has come close to replacing C. Yes, this paper makes a compelling case to look more closely at D. But could it replace C? I don't see that ever happening (in my lifetime). C is not just a programming language anymore. It's a complete (and very diverse) ecosystem. C 'replacement wannabees', have to compete with both. The only way I see C being replaced, is if all the C programmers retire, or RIP, and don't sufficiently get replaced with new ones.
Re: Safer Linux Kernel Modules Using the D Programming Language
On Saturday, 7 January 2023 at 22:25:30 UTC, areYouSureAboutThat wrote: Well, the worlds most widely used source code revision control system, is written in C ;-) There are attempts to rewrite it in safer programming languages ;-) Such as https://github.com/Byron/gitoxide Let's see if the alternative implementations turn out to be good enough and allow to eventually retire C at least for this particular task. Survival for the fittest. To be 'C like', the language needs to provide the same flexibility and control as C, and map to the hardware and its instructions set as well as C. In other words, it's going to end up being C anyway. Doesn't the D code annotated as `@system` already provide the same flexibility and control as C? If not, then what is missing?
Re: Safer Linux Kernel Modules Using the D Programming Language
On Friday, 6 January 2023 at 11:02:03 UTC, Tejas wrote: Those statements, even if spoken recently, are just a way of maintaining PR. Elon also similarly calls C++ a bloated mess and that all high performance code at Tesla is in C, as if that's something to be proud of... their ultra safety critical software project being built using a very much unsafe-by-defualt-for-everything language... Nvidia made a good decision to use ADA/SPARK, IMO Well, the worlds most widely used source code revision control system, is written in C ;-) The C language is not the problem, and I'm unable to accept the assertion in the paper, that 'C was designed to allow unsafe memory operations'. That is a red herring. In fact, C can be used in a perfectly memory safe manner. The problem is that too few programmers know how to do that, and even very experienced C programmers can get it wrong sometimes. Both tools and compilers have come along way over the last decade, and it's getting increasingly 'harder' to write memory unsafe C, but in the end, in C, its the programmer that has the control. That is what the paper should have asserted instead of that red herring. What the paper is really asserting, is that this control needs to be taken away (at least to some point) from the programmer. But C will always be the language that gives the programmer the flexibilty and control needed, when all the other languages will not. Other languages often claim to be 'C like', but that's mostly syntax related. To be 'C like', the language needs to provide the same flexibility and control as C, and map to the hardware and its instructions set as well as C. In other words, it's going to end up being C anyway.
Re: Safer Linux Kernel Modules Using the D Programming Language
On Thursday, 5 January 2023 at 20:24:07 UTC, Alexandru Militaru wrote: Hi everyone, If you remember the "D for a @safer Linux Kernel“ talk from DConf 2019 [1], then you might want to read our paper [2] on that matter that was just published in IEEE Access Journal. [1] https://youtu.be/weRSwbZtKu0 [2] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9987502 Kudos to you for staying on the ball on this topic. I enjoyed your talk back then and this article adds credibility to this important application of the language and addresses a wider audience. Well done. Bastiaan.
Re: Good News: Almost all druntime supported on arsd webassembly
On Friday, 6 January 2023 at 12:52:43 UTC, Hipreme wrote: Hello people. I have tried working again with adam's wasm minimal runtime, and yesterday I was able to make a great progress on it. Awesome! To think that custom druntime can get you out of platform situations is great risk reduction.
