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0 pointscaconym_9y ago0 comments

Doesn't the design of Go, the language, basically require that the implementation involve a runtime with a GC system? So that would make it a non-viable choice for programming in applications where memory footprint and real-time performance must be tightly controlled.

Rust is a better choice, and it's designed with this in mind. It's still young, though, and I think there might be some as-yet-unsolved issues (these are things I've vaguely heard of and could be totally off-base) like binary size, ease of dealing with raw pointers, etc.

If I was doing this sort of programming for a personal project, I'd probably try using Rust, because I like it.

Dunno about Swift, though IIRC the current reference implementation may also currently rely on GC.

0 comments

kibwen9y ago

  > like binary size, ease of dealing with raw pointers, etc

The majority in the size of typical Rust binaries is the huge amount of space (400 kb or so) that it takes to statically link jemalloc. But if you're building for a device that doesn't support dynamic allocation then you're not going to be including jemalloc, so binary size shouldn't be a problem.

As for raw pointers, they're exactly as capable as raw pointers in C, though they're deliberately more verbose as well, because even in embedded contexts one should be favoring references over raw pointers, since references are still fully checked for safety even in embedded mode and yet are represented by raw pointers at runtime and hence have zero runtime overhead.

Manishearth9y ago

Rusts binary size issues are just a matter of defaults, and they're an additive bloat, not multiplicative (If the corresponding rust binary for a 5kb C binary is 200kb, then the corresponding rust binary for a 100kb C binary is 305kb). Most people don't care about a few extra kilobytes in their binary, so Rust has chosen defaults that make some things easier but also add some extra binary size. You can turn these off and get tiny binaries if you wish without much effort.

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