Wedson Almeida Filho is a Microsoft engineer who has been prolific in his contributions to the Rust for the Linux kernel code over the past several years. Wedson has worked on many Rust Linux kernel features and even did a experimental EXT2 file-system driver port to Rust. But he’s had enough and is now stepping away from the Rust for Linux efforts.

From Wedon’s post on the kernel mailing list:

I am retiring from the project. After almost 4 years, I find myself lacking the energy and enthusiasm I once had to respond to some of the nontechnical nonsense, so it’s best to leave it up to those who still have it in them.

…

I truly believe the future of kernels is with memory-safe languages. I am no visionary but if Linux doesn’t internalize this, I’m afraid some other kernel will do to it what it did to Unix.

Lastly, I’ll leave a small, 3min 30s, sample for context here: https://youtu.be/WiPp9YEBV0Q?t=1529 – and to reiterate, no one is trying force anyone else to learn Rust nor prevent refactorings of C code."

  • @thevoidzero
    10•16 days ago

    I wouldn’t say that. For primitives yeah, day or two. But if you want to build a proper program, it’ll take time to get used to it. For my first few projects I just used clone everywhere. Passing by reference and managing lifetimes, specially when writing libraries is something that takes time to get used to. I still don’t feel confident.

    Besides that I do like Rust though. Sometimes I feel like “just let me do that, C let’s me”, but I know it’s just adding safety where C wouldn’t care.