Previously mentioned in this thread:

 

> Or did you mean Rust and Linux don't work on microcontrollers?
 

 

Hello Bruce,

 

I have checked out using a both 'Zig' and 'Rust' spending about 3 days with one and a week with the other.   Rust is its own animal!

Rust is a major iinvestment in time not only in learning the language but to start to re-thinking about the program your creating in

the great *Rust* think!

 

It's about writing code that is *SAFE* and 'C' the language is dangerous because 'C' lets you use pointers and they are really, really dangerous!  You do not initialize your pointers before you use that pointer or you have a logic error in mantaining your pointers then

... well .... *BOOM* and it got all dangerous.

 

So in Rust *think* while getting you code to compile in the first place the Rust compiler watches you like a big brother hoping to keep

you out of the Big Bad Troubles.  If you code will compile at all without too many warning and no errors at all it *not* going to build

you a runniable executiable. 

 

Also Rust does not have a 'gc' (garbage collector) and you have just like the 'C' lauguage the freedom but also the responsibility to manager how that memory is used.  In 'C' you can allocate memory from the 'heap' to build stuff dynamically but you had better

free that memory later or more *bad* news.  The Rust has some technical 'borrow' concept to be *SAFER* but I couldn't wrap my

brain around all that in the week I was checking it out!

 

I think that 'Rust' and 'Zig' can be used for embedded controllers if the parts are built on installation on the host that would match

your target development system.

 

To answer the other question in the thread about if 'Linux' or 'Rust' can run on a micro-controller?

 

That would really depend entirely on what is powering the micro-controller in question.

 

Linux is an operating systems and if the memory restriction of the target board is too small to support space for a kernel and some

form of a libc support library ... then that would be no.

 

Rust is a programming development *SYSTEM* and if it have not been built to generate code targeting the 'target' development

environment ... then that answer would be the same.

 

I am hobbiest and when paid a "systems admin" so any real developer can reply to what I have not really grasped completely.

 

73,


David

--
David - KC4ZVW
Chuluota, FL

 

 

p.s. : Bruce, have you been to any Hamcation or Hamvention, recently?


Sent: Friday, August 09, 2024 at 9:48 PM
From: "Bruce Perens via Dng" <dng@???>
To: "Dan Purgert" <dan@???>, "dng" <dng@???>
Subject: Re: [DNG] Why C/C++ ?



The answer is historically there were good reasons, but not today. Today if you know C and don't want to make a really big investment retraining, Write in Zig. If you are willing to make the investment, use Rust.

 

On Fri, Aug 9, 2024, 18:10 Dan Purgert via Dng <dng@???> wrote:

On Aug 10, 2024, onefang wrote:
> On 2024-08-09 07:59:51, Dan Purgert via Dng wrote:
> > On Aug 09, 2024, Didier Kryn wrote:
> > > Le 09/08/2024 à 00:10, karl@??? a écrit :
> > > > Hendrik Boom:
> > > > > On Thu, Aug 08, 2024 at 09:35:50AM -0500, o1bigtenor via Dng wrote:
> > > > ...
> > > > > > Why is C/C++ so absolutely wonderful?
> > > >   C is a really nice language compared to assembler.
> > > >   Though at the time, the assembler of e.g. MC68000 was
> > > >   a little high level lang. inspired with mult. adressing
> > > >   modes. [...]
> > > >
> > >
> > >     Fully agree about C. [...]
> > >
> > >     The problem of C is that it is much more subtle than it looks, and it
> > > contains a lot of pitfalls. There is a new, more secure language,
> > > which has the distinctive feature of having been accepted into the
> > > Linux kernel: Rust, but it is not yet stable.
> >
> > Nor does it work on microcontrollers ;)

>>  (...yet)

> Um, C works fine for microcontrollers.  When I programmed that tiny (RAM
> less than a kilobyte) microcontroller in assembler to create a USB
> keyboard (plus some extras that the client needed) last decade, there was
> indeed an example written in C already.

> Or did you mean Rust and Linux don't work on microcontrollers?

Rust; though admittedly I may have missed news that someone made it work.

C/C++ is /the/ language for microcontrollers -- least they're the only
languages I really see anyone in the IRC channels I hang out in talking
about -- some of us will talk assembly, but it's niche.

"Arduino" too (but that's somewhat more restricted specifically to the
"#arduino" channel).