Wedson Almeida Filho is a Microsoft engineer who has been prolific in his contributions to the Rust for the Linux kernel code over the past several years. Wedson has worked on many Rust Linux kernel features and even did a experimental EXT2 file-system driver port to Rust. But he’s had enough and is now stepping away from the Rust for Linux efforts.
From Wedon’s post on the kernel mailing list:
I am retiring from the project. After almost 4 years, I find myself lacking the energy and enthusiasm I once had to respond to some of the nontechnical nonsense, so it’s best to leave it up to those who still have it in them.
…
I truly believe the future of kernels is with memory-safe languages. I am no visionary but if Linux doesn’t internalize this, I’m afraid some other kernel will do to it what it did to Unix.
Lastly, I’ll leave a small, 3min 30s, sample for context here: https://youtu.be/WiPp9YEBV0Q?t=1529 – and to reiterate, no one is trying force anyone else to learn Rust nor prevent refactorings of C code."
It’s not just about bad/good C programmers. It’s also about how much of the context, the given C programmer has read to make sure they know enough of what they are doing.
No matter how good one is at Programming, they need to make sure to read and remember what is happening in relevant parts of code, while making their one off contribution.
That’s where the part of “leaving it to the computer” comes in. Hence, the usefulness of code checkers and even better if the compiler itself enforces the stuff. As long as the rules are good enough.
Let’s just hope we are not jumping to another language 20 years down the line.
