I could actually see myself contributing to Rust kernel code. C code has always been impossible for me to understand, but the Rust part seems to have a more understandable structure
I think this is the most important aspect of Linux accepting more rust contributions. More and more existing maintainers are aging out, and people just don’t learn or want to build large applications in C anymore. From what I understand companies doing proprietary kernel development have largely made the rust transition for new code at this point, so fewer and fewer systems level programmers will be used to C (and C++ over time) for these tasks. Existing maintainers pressure against rust development could become a threat to the long term viability of the kernel.
Rust code (and the ecosystem) seems to put a higher priority on describing code contracts through the type system and documentation. I personally feel you don’t need as much context to write functional code compared to C where every corner of the codebase might be hiding something that could impact the part your working on.
This exactly. I always wanted to contribute to the kernel but after being a c++ dev for so many years I absolutely don’t want to do C, and rust would allow me to have fun doing kernel hacking
I could actually see myself contributing to Rust kernel code. C code has always been impossible for me to understand, but the Rust part seems to have a more understandable structure
I think this is the most important aspect of Linux accepting more rust contributions. More and more existing maintainers are aging out, and people just don’t learn or want to build large applications in C anymore. From what I understand companies doing proprietary kernel development have largely made the rust transition for new code at this point, so fewer and fewer systems level programmers will be used to C (and C++ over time) for these tasks. Existing maintainers pressure against rust development could become a threat to the long term viability of the kernel.
Rust code (and the ecosystem) seems to put a higher priority on describing code contracts through the type system and documentation. I personally feel you don’t need as much context to write functional code compared to C where every corner of the codebase might be hiding something that could impact the part your working on.
This exactly. I always wanted to contribute to the kernel but after being a c++ dev for so many years I absolutely don’t want to do C, and rust would allow me to have fun doing kernel hacking