Some Were Meant for C: The Endurance of an Unmanageable Language [pdf]
Related: &quot;Safe Systems Software and the Future of Computing by Joe Duffy&quot; at RustConf 2017.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=CuD7SCqHB7k" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=CuD7SCqHB7k</a><p>I summarized this excellent talk here [1], but one of the main points is that compatibility with existing systems is important for adoption.  (They learned that the hard way -- by having their entire project cancelled and almost everything thrown out.)  He advocates unit-by-unit rewrites rather than big-bang rewrites, just like Kell does in this conference article.<p>And compatibility with C in Windows should be easier than it is in the Unix world, because the whole OS is architected around a binary protocol AFAIK -- COM.<p>My sense is that Rust may not have thought enough about compatibility early in its life.  Only later when they ran into adoption problems did they start talking more about compatibility.<p>Also, it seems Rust competes more with C++ than C, and there seems to be very little attempt to be compatible with C++ (although perhaps that problem is intractable.)<p>Personally I don&#x27;t think Rust will be a successful C replacement.  It will have some adoption, but the Linux kernel will still be running on bajillions of devices 10 years from now, written in C.  And in 20 years, something else will come along to replace either C or Linux, but that thing won&#x27;t involve Rust.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;ProgrammingLanguages&#x2F;comments&#x2F;6y6gx4&#x2F;safe_systems_software_and_the_future_of_computing&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;ProgrammingLanguages&#x2F;comments&#x2F;6y6gx...</a>