Talk on what a systems programming language needs to replace C

[Russel Winder]

On Mon, 2019-08-26 at 09:30 +0000, Dibyendu Majumdar via Digitalmars-d wrote:
[…]
> a) The compelling feature is the Rust automatic memory management 
> /memory safety without GC and runtime - that can motivate systems 
> programmers to move from C.

It would be nice if this were the case, but Rust is two systems, the safe and
unsafe systems, and you have to build a lot of infrastructure to use safe code
over unsafe code.

> b) Parity with C - this is where Rust lacks and needs 
> enhancements.

But why is the purpose to make Rust a superset of C. Why can't we challenge
that C is the ideal language for "systems programming" except that it has
problems such as buffer overflow. OK so C is a portable assembly language
focussed on PDP-8 and PDP-11 hacked to work on VAX-11, but why can't we start
afresh? So Rust and Go are trying to do that, but are they failing in the
goal. Go I'd say yes since it has become a Web programming language, and that
is not "systems programming" nor the only thinkg that C needed replacing for.
Rust has a problem because of the unsafe mode needed for systems level work.

> Comparing with D, perhaps D excels at b) but lacks a compelling 
> memory management solution that would motivate systems 
> programmers.

As I understand it, D, like, Go, requires a runtime system over and above the
C runtime system.

-- 
Russel.
===========================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk

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