lime!

i think that’s basically us only.

ironically, if you stop doing pizza parties that’s really bad for morale, because everyone knows it’s cheap.

so it was! cool!

i will admit i’m not very well versed in rust, the only time i’ve used it was in like 2016, in an embedded context where there were hard restrictions on what could be used. no crates, no macros, no traits, no threading, and a very limited number of functions. procedural style, basically. someone else chose the wrong language and i just had to work within the system.

if the language is stable, i’m assuming the instability issues come from external crates? or are they just made up?

my take on the social media thing is that it basically amounts to creating an outside context problem. gathering the opinions of us plebs doesn’t really matter because the kernel isn’t developed by the masses, no matter what ESR thinks. the project is headed by Linus (and his “generals”) and what they say goes. so riling up a bunch of nobodies that aren’t fully aware of all the requirements there are on the kernel will amount to brigading no matter how well-meaning the mob is.

the LKML exists and is public specifically because they don’t want to deal with fielding questions from people on social media. they want to field questions from people who care enough to read it.

actually, they did try using social media for a while. unfortunately they chose google plus.

the linux kernel is over 30 million lines of code. it may not be there forever, but good luck phasing it out in a lifetime.

it’s a different technology and paradigm that the old guard would have to take considerable time to learn to be as productive as they are in C. it requires a different way of thinking about systems.

basically the rust-in-kernel-gang includes none of the “main” kernel team because they are busy building the kernel. this is an experiment to see if a second programming language can be successfully integrated into the kernel at all. if they try to force their way in, that’s going to cause problems for everyone.

it’s more niche than C, has less competency available, works very differently to C, and requires a whole new toolchain to be added to the already massive kernel compilation process. for it to be plain sailing adding it to the kernel some of the worlds’ foremost domain experts on operating systems would have to re-learn basically everything.

also since rust is just coming up on 15 years of existence without a 1.0 release, there’s no way to ensure that the code written today will be considered well-formed by the time 1.0 hits.