TechCrunch Urges Developers: Replace C Code With Rust (techcrunch.com)

Software engineer and TechCrunch columnist Jon Evans writes that the C programming language "gives its users far too much artillery with which to shoot their feet off" and is "no longer suitable for the world which C has built." An anonymous reader shared Evans' post: Copious experience has taught us all, the hard way, that it is very difficult, verging on "basically impossible," to write extensive amounts of C code that is not riddled with security holes. As I wrote two years ago, in my first Death To C piece... "Buffer overflows and dangling pointers lead to catastrophic security holes, again and again and again, just like yesteryear, just like all the years of yore. We cannot afford its gargantuan, gaping security blind spots any more. It's long past time to retire and replace it with another language.

"The trouble is, most modern languages don't even try to replace C... They're not good at the thing C does best: getting down to the bare metal and working at mach speed." Today I am seriously suggesting that when engineers refactor existing C code, especially parsers and other input handlers, they replace it -- slowly, bit by bit -- with Rust... we are only going to dig ourselves out of our giant collective security hole iteratively, one shovelful of better code and better tooling at a time."
He also suggests other fixes -- like using a language-theoretic approach which conceptualizes valid inputs as their own formal language, and formal verification of the correctness of algorithms. But he still insists that "C has become a monster" -- and that we must start replacing it with Rust.

Comments

Yes, go ahead!

[mveloso]

Yes, replace billions of working C code with billions of lines of code in a new language. What could possibly go wrong?

Re:Yes, go ahead!

[BCooley]

He's not suggesting that at all.

"..I am seriously suggesting that when engineers refactor existing C code, especially parsers and other input handlers, they replace it — slowly, bit by bit — with Rust."

He's suggesting that when you refactor a critical piece of C code - in other words you're already going to change it and potentially add brand new C/C++ security issues - you instead use a language with some form of god damn formal verification and some fucking way of validating that you're not opening a new exploitable vulnerability that will bring down half the damn internet.

I mean is that really too much to ask?

What happens to Rust when Mozilla is gone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rust is very tied to Mozilla. And Mozilla's only remaining "successful" product is Firefox. But Firefox's market share is dropping. It was only a few percent, last I saw, while Chrome is over 50%. Mozilla reportedly gets a lot of funding from Yahoo, due to a Firefox search deal. So here we have an organization with one major product, but this project is being rejected by consumers, and what might be this organization's most significant source of revenue comes from this failing product and is paid for by another company that isn't doing so well. I fear for Mozilla's future if, say, the Yahoo deal wasn't renewed and they couldn't find a replacement.

If Mozilla goes the way of the dodo bird, then I can't see the Rust project really going anywhere. I don't think it has a robust independent community like Python or C++ has, for example.

I think it is too risky to adopt Rust, especially for important long term projects. The tech industry moves fast. Rust could plausibly be gone in 3 years, while languages like C, C++, Python and PHP are far more likely to be going strong.