Comment by tialaramex
18 days ago
I think the popularity of Rust for Linux is also in part a reflection of internal discontent with poorly documented and sometimes straight up poorly understood kernel internal APIs.
When a developer asks Can I Fizzle this Doodad? C is comfortable with the answer being "It'll definitely compile but whether it would work is complicated - ask the expert on Fizzling and the Doodad expert, and hope they give the same answer" but Rust wants the answer to be "Yes" or "No" or at the very least, "Here is some actual text explaining when that's fine"
Sometimes it really is hard work to figure this out but for a project as big as Linux even in those cases it's often worth doing that hard work, because you unlock something valuable for every non-expert contributor and Linux has a lot of those.
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