> You are adding a second layer of abstraction that brings very little generalization
Presumably, this is an investment in replacing code written in C. There's no way around abstraction or overhead in such a venture.
> there's no way it doesn't significant put additional pressure when making breaking changes
This is the cost of investment.
> The natural reaction is that there will be less such breaking changes and interfaces will ossify.
A) "fewer", not "less". Breaking changes are countable.
B) A slower velocity of changes does not imply ossification. Furthermore, I'm not sure this is true—the benefits of formal verification of constraints surrounding memory-safety seems as if it would naturally lead to long-term higher velocity. Finally, I can't speak to the benefits of a freely-breakable kernel interface (I've never had to maintain a kernel for clients myself, thank god) but again, this seems like a worthwhile short-term investment for long-term gain.
> In addition, depending on the skill of the "binding writer" (and generally, since the rust bindings are actually designed instead of evolving organically), the second set of interfaces may simply be actually easier to use. There may not even be a point to evolving one interface, or the other. Which just further contributes to splitting the project.
Sure, this is possible. I present two questions, then: 1) what is lost with lesser popularity of the C interface with allegedly less stability, and 2) is the stability, popularity, and confidence in the new interface worth it? I think it might be, but I have no clue how to reason about the politics of the Linux ABI.
I have never written stable kernel code, so I don't have confident guidance myself. But I can say that if you put a kernel developer in front of me of genius ability, I would still trust and be more willing to engage with rust code. I cannot conceive of a C programmer skilled enough they would not benefit from the additional tooling and magnification of ability. There seems to be some attitude that if C is abandoned, something vital is lost. I submit that what is lost may not be of technical, but rather cultural (or, eek, egoist), value. Surely we can compensate for this if it is true.
EDIT, follow-up: if an unstable, less-used interface is desirable, surely this could be solved in the long term with two rust bindings.
EDIT2: in response to an aunt comment, I am surely abusing the term "ABI". I'm using it as a loose term for compatibility of interfaces at a linker-object level.
I just abandoned the code interview altogether and ask them questions about process. It's a very simple workaround, but very effective. I'll admit it helps that there are very few problems these days outside of specific problems to solve that require a high degree of technical competency to tackle.
Can you explain why you think this? I don't understand the reasoning and it's certainly not "obvious". There's certainly no technical reason implying this, so is this just resistance to learning rust? C'mon, kernel developers can surely learn new tricks. This just seems like a defeatist attitude.
EDIT: The process overhead seems straightforwardly worth it—rust can largely preserve semantics, offers the potential to increase confidence in code, and can encourage a new generation of contribution with a faster ramp-up to writing quality code. Notably nowhere here is a guarantee of better code quality, but presumably the existing quality-guaranteeing processes can translate fine to a roughly equivalently-capable language that offers more compile-time mechanisms for quality guarantees.
I don't understand why rust bindings imply a freezing (or chilling) of the ABI—surely rust is bound by roughly the same constraints C is, being fully ABI-compatible in terms of consuming and being consumed. Is this commentary on how Rust is essentially, inherently more committed to backwards compatibility, or is this commentary on the fact that two languages will necessarily bring constraints that retard the ability to make breaking changes?
A sledgehammer doesn't need to be able to turn a screw. Perhaps states might take advantage of this, but the incompetency of toadies at technology won't impact their competency at wreaking destruction.
Lack of empirical support does not imply empirical support of no insight. In fact, it seems like you can reasonably draw whatever conclusion you please with about equivalent (zero) evidence. Calling these "myths" seems like a bit of a stretch—perhaps "popular conception" might be more accurate.
What do you mean by the "high" end? I would consider this sort of interview style necessarily precluding such a place from being considered a high-quality work-place. Not only is it a miserable way to interview, it's not an effective signal for engineer quality beyond rapid code snippet production.
> Excluding places that do that leaves you with what exactly? Boutique shops filled with 20 year veterans?
We are on a VC forum—I imagine small shops focused on quality are quite common here.
The appropriate restrictions are relative to the size and momentum of the organization. It's easy to spend months setting up safeguards rather than working on product development that won't proportionally return.
Of course, this involves being honest with yourself about risk and reward, and we all have implicit incentives to disregard the risk until we get burned and learn to factor that in.
I had no idea people took hackerrank as a serious signal rather than as a tool for recent graduates to track interview prep progress. Surely it has all the same issues AI does: you have no way of verifying that the person who takes the interview actually is responsible for that signal.
I don't see AI as a serious threat to the interview process unless your interview process looks a lot like hackerrank.
> The past 80 years have been the most peaceful in history.
This reminds me of that mlk bit about the white liberal who "prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice"
We may be at peace, but not in terms that will hold when our grasp on power slips. Half the world wants us dead, and who can blame them? We've destroyed the world to enrich ourselves. We're not lady liberty, we're tony soprano.
The DoD is likely the most evil institution in all of history. Perhaps tied with the political parties that are its flipside. When you factor in global warming, it's undeniable.
Neither? It's however the voice is encoded over the cell network. Again, I don't understand why because there's more than enough signal to stream digital audio. It's like they haven't upgraded voice quality in 30 years despite this being an obvious market advantage.
Hell, you can still rig a physical handset to work with bluetooth + cellphone and it'll guaranteed sound terrible.