>There are two conclusions: 1) If Cloudflare hadn't decided on a proper failure mode for this (i.e. a hardcoded fallback config), the end result would've been the same: a bunch of 500s, and 2) most programs wouldn't have behaved much differently in the case of a failed allocation.

So why do they need Rust then? What advantages does it provide? That was the main point of the article — we all wanted a better language, but got another crappy one instead.

> So why do they need Rust then? What advantages does it provide?

That Rust didn't prevent one error in one specific instance does not mean that Rust didn't prevent any errors across any instances. Nor does it mean that Cloudflare didn't benefit from Rust in some way(s) elsewhere.

For example, from one of Cloudflare's previous blogposts [0] (emphasis added):

> Oxy gives us a powerful combination of performance, safety, and flexibility. Built in Rust, it eliminates entire classes of bugs that plagued our Nginx/LuaJIT-based FL1, like memory safety issues and data races, while delivering C-level performance.

[0]: https://blog.cloudflare.com/20-percent-internet-upgrade/

To prevent all the other potential memory safety bugs that didn't crash prior to this one?