Comment by pron
13 hours ago
Rust does have a GC, but I agree it planted its flag at some intermediate point on the spectrum. Zig didn't "go backwards" but planted its own flag ever so slightly closer to C than to ATS (although both Rust and Zig are almost indistinguishable from C when compare to ATS). I don't know if where Rust planted its flag is universally better than where Zig planted its flag, but 1. no one else does either, 2. both are compromises, and 3. it's uncertain whether a universal sweet spot exists in the first place.
> How did you derive this from the top 25 of CWEs? Let's say you completely remove the spatial memory issues. You still get temporal memory issues at #6.
Sure, but spatial safety is higher. So if Rust's compromise, we'll exact a price on temporal safety and have both temporal and spatial safety, is reasonable, then so is Zig's that says, the price on temporal safety is too high for what you get in return, but spatial safety only is a better deal. Neither go as far as ATS in offering, in principle, the ability to avoid all bugs. Nobody knows whether Rust's compormise is universally better than Zig's or vice versa (or perhaps neither is universally better), but I find it really strange to arbitrarily claim that one compromise is reasonable and the other isn't, where both are obviously compromises that recognise there are different benefits and different costs, and that not every benefit is worth any cost.
> Rust does have a GC
It doesn't. Not by any reasonable definition of having a GC.
And "opt-in non-tracing GC that isn't used largely throughout the standard library" is not a reasonable definition.
> Nobody knows whether Rust's compormise is universally better than Zig's
When it comes to having more segfaults, we know. Zig "wins" most segfaults per issue Razzie Award.
This is what happens when you ignore one type of memory safety. You have to have both. Just ask Go.
> And "opt-in non-tracing GC that isn't used largely throughout the standard library" is not a reasonable definition.
Given that refcounting and tracing are the two classic GC algorithms, I don't see what specifying "non tracing" here does, and reference-counting with special-casing of the one reference case is still reference counting. I don't know if the "reasonable definition" of GC matters at all, but if it does, this does count as one.
I agree that the one-reference case is handled in the language and the shared reference case is handled in the standard library, and I think it can be reasonable to call using just the one-reference case "not a GC", but most Rust programs do use the GC for shared references. It is also true that Rust depends less on GC than Java or Go, but that's not the same as not having one.
> When it comes to having more segfaults, we know. Zig "wins" most segfaults per issue Razzie Award.
And Rust wins the Razzie Award for most painful development and lack of similarly powerful arenas. It's like declaring that you win by paying $100 for something while I paid $50 for something else without comparing what we got for the money, or declaring that you win by getting a faster car without looking at how much I paid for mine.
> This is what happens when you ignore one type of memory safety.
When you have less safety for any property, you're guarnateed to have more violations. This is what you buy. Obviously, this doesn't mean that avoiding those extra violations is necessarily worth the cost you pay for that extra safety. When you buy something, looking just at what you pay or just at what you get doesn't make any sense. The question is whether this is the best deal for your case.
Nobody knows if there is a universal best deal here let alone what it is. What is clear is that nothing here is free, and that nothing here has infinite value.
> I don't know if the "reasonable definition" of GC matters at all
If you define all non-red colors to be green, it is impossible to talk about color theory.
> And Rust wins the Razzie Award for most painful development and lack of similarly powerful arenas.
That's a non-quantifiable skill issue. Segfaults per issue is a quantifiable thing.
> When you have less safety for any property, you're guarnateed to have more violations.
If that's what you truly believed outside some debate point. Then you'd be advocating for ATS or Ada.SPARK, not Zig.
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