I don't get it. Are we reading the same article? This article is so generic that it reads like vacuous truth to me. But I don't see their bitterness towards Rust (or anything, really. It's just vacuous.) from it. Is this person a famous anti-rust'er or something?

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darkwater an hour ago | parent | next [-]

But it links to this post

https://joshlf.com/posts/memory-safety-life-and-death/

Under a "it doesn't matter it's memory-safe if..."

	▲	jiggawatts 10 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You may be misinterpreting the intended meaning. It's like saying it doesn't matter if surgery is done another antiseptic conditions if the patient isn't also given a course of antibiotics during recovery. It's not an argument against safe practices, it's an argument for amending one kind of safety with others.

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zuzululu 35 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's so bland and generic its bizarre like somebody is botting it. Weird that all the comments calling this out are getting flagged or downvoted.

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raincole 28 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

What 'all the comments'? There aren't many comments in this thread. You mean this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48432736 ? I flagged it too. I think the flag is quite justified.

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zuzululu 25 minutes ago | parent [-]

oh I don't particularly care I'm just asking what is it about this article that is so worthy of being front page? I'm literally just calling out the content. I'm sorry for complaining.

	▲	jackhalford 2 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It’s getting attention because the subtext of the article is the zig vs rust ideological battle going on

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gghh 14 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

It's bland and generic because it's a manifesto. Author (and HN submitter) is Loris Cro, aka @kristoff_it, VP of Community at Zig Software Foundation.

In his role, devising as set of general guidelines to use as compass when things (inevitably! and often!) get very very muddy and Right v. Wrong is hard to tell apart -- both objectively, and also from the point of view of being a community leader with ton of vested interest -- is essentially one half of his job. Other half is abide to said guidelines.

So @kristoff_it last week sat down, came up with three simple rules short enough he can print on a business card (or hang on his office wall or whatever), and posted them here to test if they make sense to the wider community.

TLDR: yes can seem bland / generic but within context it makes sense to me author needed to distill his ethics in a nutshell.

	▲	zuzululu 4 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		oh. I've never heard of zig. I use Rust.

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bigyabai an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> It doesn’t matter that the language you use is memory-safe

> nobody can trick me into mistaking lesser stars for my true destination

The author seems to be in some level of denial around compile-time safety checks. They're right that runtime safety errors are an issue, but it feels wrong to discount compile time checkers when it can save a lot of yak shaving.

	▲	mcdonje a minute ago \| parent [-]
		Quote the entire sentence. >It doesn’t matter that the language you use is memory-safe, if you didn’t design for correctness or have no process that will eventually lead you to fixing all bugs. It's also worth noting that they linked a post about how memory safety is literally a matter of life and death, so it seems like their point is that memory safety is one class of bug, and a compiler guarantee about it doesn't equate to a guarantee of correct, bugless, unexploitable code. Like, the linked author brought up that Khashoggi's wife's phone was hacked. Maybe that was due to a memory bug or some other kind of bug. Maybe the next journalist who gets hacked is a victim of a memory bug or some other kind of bug. But that linked post didn't take a holistic view of correctness, but went straight to, "Rust is safe. Rust saves lives." There's a logical error there that's being pointed out. If you really want to save lives, you need to eliminate exploits. Not just do a victory lap because your compiler ostensibly eliminates one class of them. The compiler doesn't catch all bugs. The compiler isn't the only tool for catching bugs. That's my reading of it, anyway. I think he has a point, and the Rust people do as well. I think it's wrong to portray him as bitter.