One of my favorite Firefox bugs was some I don’t quite remember the details of, but went something like this:
“There’s a crash while using this config file.” Something more complex than that, but ultimately a crash of some kind.
Years later, like 20 years later, the bug was closed. You see, they re-wrote the config parser in Rust, and now this is fixed.”
That’s cool but it’s not the part I remember. The part I always think about is, imagine responding to the bug right after it was opened with “sorry, we need to go off and write our own programming language before this bug is fixed. Don’t worry, we’ll be back, it’s just gonna take some time.”
Nobody would believe you. But yet, it’s what happened.
One of my favorite Firefox bugs was some I don’t quite remember the details of, but went something like this:
“There’s a crash while using this config file.” Something more complex than that, but ultimately a crash of some kind.
Years later, like 20 years later, the bug was closed. You see, they re-wrote the config parser in Rust, and now this is fixed.”
That’s cool but it’s not the part I remember. The part I always think about is, imagine responding to the bug right after it was opened with “sorry, we need to go off and write our own programming language before this bug is fixed. Don’t worry, we’ll be back, it’s just gonna take some time.”
Nobody would believe you. But yet, it’s what happened.
To be fair, any rewrite could have fixed it, didn't have to wait for Rust.
No, Graydon Hoare took one look at the config code, went “fuck this” and decided to create a new language instead.
But that take ruins all the intrigue of their comment... But youre spot on. They fabricated a story.
I didn’t say otherwise. Rust is not the point here.
All software has long-lived bugs. None are bug-free, at any point in their existance, so it's almost inevitable. Have you seen Windows' bug tracker?
The anti-Firefox mob really is striving to take shots at it.
The point of the article isn't a criticism of Linux, but an analysis that leads to more productive code review.