alt Hacker NewsI have no particular religious preference for a language. One uses what one feels is appropriate.
But, let's say this effort is a complete success. What's next?
Can all the maintainers of the c codebase move over to maintaining (forward) the Rust codebase. Surely there'll be some friction, and losses to friction.
What about deployments, monitoring, support and trouble-shooting? Are the teams that perform those functions now capable of performing those functions in the future? It seems to me that the here-to-there for functional, evolving and reliable systems in the real world has been elided and become simply "a player to be named later".
Replies
> Can all the maintainers of the c codebase move over to maintaining (forward) the Rust codebase. Surely there'll be some friction, and losses to friction.
there are always losses. Anyone who can maintain a non-trival C code base can maintain Rust. It will take them some time to learn, but learning a new programming language is not hard for someone who wants to. In a couple years they will be just as productive.
The question is do they want to? I do not have much hope the existing maintainers will move. Some will, but I expect the majority will not.
I agree there's some risk involved here, but the kind of thinking that you should stick to what you know can lead to stagnation. I much prefer the mental model of "capable engineers can pick up any language". Sure, it'll take time to learn these things, but it should not be a blocker.