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0 pointsphire9mo ago0 comments

Keep in mind that the 2012 presentations dates to 10 months after Rust's first release, and its version of "Memory Safety" was collecting quite a bit of attention. I'd argue the definition was already changing by this point. It's also possible that Go was already discovering their version of "Memory Safety" just wasn't safe enough.

If you go back to the original 2009 announcement talk, "Memory Safety" is listed as an explicit goal, with no carveouts:

"Safety is critical. It's critical that the language be type-safe and that it be memory-safe."

"It is important that a program not be able to derive a bad address and just use it; That a program that compiles is type-safe and memory-safe. That is a critical part of making robust software, and that's just fundamental."

https://youtu.be/rKnDgT73v8s?t=463

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SkiFire139mo ago

> Rust's first release, and its version of "Memory Safety" was collecting quite a bit of attention

Note that this was not Rust's first stable release, but it's first public release. At the time it was still changing a lot and still had "garbage collected" types.

phireOP9mo ago

Yeah, it was the 0.1 release. I can't remember exactly when Rust entered the general "programming language discourse" on hackernews and /r/programming, but it was somewhere around here. I'm sure the people behind Go would have known about it by this point in time.

And while rust did have optional "garbage collected pointers", it's important to point out that it is not a garbage collected language. The ownership system and borrow checker were very much front-and-centre for the 0.1 release, it was what everyone was talking about.

Actually, my memory is that while the language had syntax to declare garbage collected pointers, it wasn't actually hooked up to a proper garbage collector. It was always more of a "we are reserving the syntax and we will hook it up when needed", and it turns out the ownership system was powerful enough that it was never needed.

SkiFire139mo ago

> Actually, my memory is that while the language had syntax to declare garbage collected pointers, it wasn't actually hooked up to a proper garbage collector. It was always more of a "we are reserving the syntax and we will hook it up when needed", and it turns out the ownership system was powerful enough that it was never needed.

AFAIK it was just an `Rc`/`Arc` with the possibility of upgrading it to an actual GC in the future.

codys9mo ago

That's a very good point on the timing. Thanks for adding that extra info.

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SkiFire139mo ago

> Rust's first release, and its version of "Memory Safety" was collecting quite a bit of attention

Note that this was not Rust's first stable release, but it's first public release. At the time it was still changing a lot and still had "garbage collected" types.

phireOP9mo ago

SkiFire139mo ago

AFAIK it was just an `Rc`/`Arc` with the possibility of upgrading it to an actual GC in the future.

codys9mo ago

That's a very good point on the timing. Thanks for adding that extra info.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse