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Why Amazon is writing Firecracker in Rust? Why not C/C++?

2 points by on2k17nm ↗ HN
What is the criteria for selecting Rust for writing Firecracker ? Why not C/C++ which are already proven, battle hardened with lage number of knowledgeable developers ? Is Rust that great ? How will this move impact future of C/C++ after backing from such a large corporation?

7 comments

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[dead] QuinnyPig
Because the Rust Evangelism Strike Force apparently got to them.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
deogeo
> Why not C/C++ which are already proven

Proven as easy to introduce bugs and vulnerabilities with.

on2k17nm
So you mean to say program written in Rust by any programmer will bug free ? IMHO, lousy programmer will write lousy code ,irrespective of C, C++, Rust, Python.. What do you say ?

I want to understand a compelling reason for yet another systems programming language ? I don't know Rust as of now, and the reason for Rust that I have heard often is the safety/security, but what I can most certainly say is that with this safety/security Rust must be compromising something that C++ is not.

Too many programming languages with same purpose will make life of a programmer too hard. Already tech scene is changing so fast, and yet another programming language will only make programmers more frustrated :-(

deogeo
It won't be bug free, but it will be free of certain classes of bugs. That's the compelling reason for Rust - avoiding the many pitfalls and undefined behavior of C and C++.

As for exactly which bugs (safe) Rust prevents, memory safety is one, but I'll let someone more knowledgeable answer - I'm sure they'll be along shortly.

steveklabnik
I’m not privy to the details, but one interesting thing here is that, in my understanding, it started with google and crosvm, which Firecracker was initially forked from, and they now share a common base.
SamReidHughes
Aren't the answers to these questions really obvious?