I'm ambivalent about Rust these days.
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I'm ambivalent about Rust these days.
On the one hand, I love Rust's approach to safety. Meaning type safety, memory safety, and protection against data races. It's possible, and common, to build safe abstractions atop a small amount of unsafe code. Even a kernel for an embedded OS can have only a small amount of unsafe code (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48071117). A software stack written in Rust down to the bottom would have much less unsafe code than our current stacks.
1/?
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I'm ambivalent about Rust these days.
On the one hand, I love Rust's approach to safety. Meaning type safety, memory safety, and protection against data races. It's possible, and common, to build safe abstractions atop a small amount of unsafe code. Even a kernel for an embedded OS can have only a small amount of unsafe code (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48071117). A software stack written in Rust down to the bottom would have much less unsafe code than our current stacks.
1/?
Also on the positive side, the fact that Rust doesn't bring in a garbage collector or other heavy runtime means that Rust is on par with C and C++ in terms of being a good choice for writing libraries that can be embedded in projects written in other languages that do have their own runtime. That made Rust a good choice for AccessKit, the GUI accessibility library project that I started, though my goals for the project extended beyond Rust GUIs specifically.
2/?
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Also on the positive side, the fact that Rust doesn't bring in a garbage collector or other heavy runtime means that Rust is on par with C and C++ in terms of being a good choice for writing libraries that can be embedded in projects written in other languages that do have their own runtime. That made Rust a good choice for AccessKit, the GUI accessibility library project that I started, though my goals for the project extended beyond Rust GUIs specifically.
2/?
But, the Rust compiler is well-known for requiring significant computing power and memory. As just one recent anecdote, the prolific Hacker News commenter Thomas Ptacek recently mentioned that waiting for a Rust compile to finish was a factor in him deciding to comment on a controversial thread. And he was presumably running the Rust compiler on a high-end computer, the kind that we well-off software developers tend to use.
3/?
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But, the Rust compiler is well-known for requiring significant computing power and memory. As just one recent anecdote, the prolific Hacker News commenter Thomas Ptacek recently mentioned that waiting for a Rust compile to finish was a factor in him deciding to comment on a controversial thread. And he was presumably running the Rust compiler on a high-end computer, the kind that we well-off software developers tend to use.
3/?
I don't feel good about using, promoting, or contributing to the network effect of a language that is only practically available to well-off software developers. But at the same time, I don't want to write and encourage others to write more code that's prone to the kinds of bugs that are common in C and C++. I want safety, for applications and also system software if possible, to be available in a language that people without high-end computers can practically use.
4/?
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I don't feel good about using, promoting, or contributing to the network effect of a language that is only practically available to well-off software developers. But at the same time, I don't want to write and encourage others to write more code that's prone to the kinds of bugs that are common in C and C++. I want safety, for applications and also system software if possible, to be available in a language that people without high-end computers can practically use.
4/?
The most underpowered computer that can practically run rustc at all is a supercomputer by historical standards. Many such computers are now discarded as e-waste. I want such computers to be usable, including for developing their own software. Rust can produce very efficient, fast-starting, lean applications that can run very well on these computers. But that software can't be _developed_ on these computers, thus reinforcing the divide between user and developer.
5/?
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The most underpowered computer that can practically run rustc at all is a supercomputer by historical standards. Many such computers are now discarded as e-waste. I want such computers to be usable, including for developing their own software. Rust can produce very efficient, fast-starting, lean applications that can run very well on these computers. But that software can't be _developed_ on these computers, thus reinforcing the divide between user and developer.
5/?
I also want new personal computers to be developed that take advantage of the very low power consumption of application processors that are designed for industrial embedded applications, to do things that we currently consider impractical, like a laptop that can run for a full day on a small (e.g. 2000 mAh) battery. A laptop that can run directly off a solar panel would be even better; we've had solar-powered pocket calculators for decades, after all.
6/?
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I also want new personal computers to be developed that take advantage of the very low power consumption of application processors that are designed for industrial embedded applications, to do things that we currently consider impractical, like a laptop that can run for a full day on a small (e.g. 2000 mAh) battery. A laptop that can run directly off a solar panel would be even better; we've had solar-powered pocket calculators for decades, after all.
6/?
As an example of the kind of processor I'm thinking of, consider the Microchip (formerly Atmel) SAMA5 family. Single-core Cortex-A5 at 500 MHz, benchmarking at 722 DMIPS on the evaluation board I recently ordered (yes, I've gone far down this rabbit hole), with 128 or 256 MB of RAM in typical configurations. The practicality of achieving 15 hours of battery life on a 2000 mAh battery has been directly validated by this SoC family's use in the HumanWare Mantis Q40 Braille display/note-taker.
7/?
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As an example of the kind of processor I'm thinking of, consider the Microchip (formerly Atmel) SAMA5 family. Single-core Cortex-A5 at 500 MHz, benchmarking at 722 DMIPS on the evaluation board I recently ordered (yes, I've gone far down this rabbit hole), with 128 or 256 MB of RAM in typical configurations. The practicality of achieving 15 hours of battery life on a 2000 mAh battery has been directly validated by this SoC family's use in the HumanWare Mantis Q40 Braille display/note-taker.
7/?
That Mantis is running a closed software stack on a SAMA5D3 SoC. It primarily acts as a Braille terminal for a PC or mainstream mobile device, and also has a handful of other applications, including a book reader that can download books over WiFi. But it could *be* a personal computer all by itself; it's already running Linux. Yes, it would be a personal computer with CPU performance somewhere in the neighborhood of a Pentium II. But we used to do real personal computing on those.
8/?
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That Mantis is running a closed software stack on a SAMA5D3 SoC. It primarily acts as a Braille terminal for a PC or mainstream mobile device, and also has a handful of other applications, including a book reader that can download books over WiFi. But it could *be* a personal computer all by itself; it's already running Linux. Yes, it would be a personal computer with CPU performance somewhere in the neighborhood of a Pentium II. But we used to do real personal computing on those.
8/?
Like I said, I already ordered a SAMA5 evaluation board, specifically the SAMA5D27 WLSOM1 evaluation kit, with 256 MB of RAM. I got Alpine Linux running on it. It can compile C. Slowly, yes; compiling CPython (default configuration with only base development packages) took 3.5 hours. But still, it finished, without running out of memory or thrashing endlessly. When I tried compiling a small Rust application, it took long enough just to compile the syn crate that I gave up.
9/?
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P pixelate@tweesecake.social shared this topic
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As an example of the kind of processor I'm thinking of, consider the Microchip (formerly Atmel) SAMA5 family. Single-core Cortex-A5 at 500 MHz, benchmarking at 722 DMIPS on the evaluation board I recently ordered (yes, I've gone far down this rabbit hole), with 128 or 256 MB of RAM in typical configurations. The practicality of achieving 15 hours of battery life on a 2000 mAh battery has been directly validated by this SoC family's use in the HumanWare Mantis Q40 Braille display/note-taker.
7/?
@matt ooooo you're doing work with the same SoC I am thinking of using for my mesh phone project
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@matt ooooo you're doing work with the same SoC I am thinking of using for my mesh phone project
@freya Seriously? OK, I'm not crazy for using this SoC in 2026.
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Like I said, I already ordered a SAMA5 evaluation board, specifically the SAMA5D27 WLSOM1 evaluation kit, with 256 MB of RAM. I got Alpine Linux running on it. It can compile C. Slowly, yes; compiling CPython (default configuration with only base development packages) took 3.5 hours. But still, it finished, without running out of memory or thrashing endlessly. When I tried compiling a small Rust application, it took long enough just to compile the syn crate that I gave up.
9/?
So, we could have a general-purpose personal computer that runs for 15 hours on a 2000 mAh battery. Maybe more with TTS output rather than a Braille display; I gather that Braille displays are fairly power-hungry because of all the pins moving up and down. But I believe that a general-purpose personal computer needs to be good for modifying its own software, at all levels of the stack. Rust fails hard on that criterion on this low-power CPU that has performance that used to be good.
10/?
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@freya Seriously? OK, I'm not crazy for using this SoC in 2026.
@matt fuck no. look at the security features, onboard secure element and eFuses and such on some of them. I'm pretty sure that's an SoC that's covered by the CIP-LTS Linux kernel, which is what I plan to use in my device to avoid the "woops your bsp is no longer supported, fuck your updates" problem. specs I'm thinking. SAMA5D27 536MHz, 256MiB ram, 256MiB flash for OS, 4GB flash for apps and data. qwerty keyboard, D-pad, trackwheel, 2.8-inch 320x240 LCD. screenreader, obviously. custom UI layer because xorg and Wayland for this are both bad. the radio stack is SX1262 LoRa and MM8108 Wi-Fi HaLow, the former for device-to-device messaging, the latter for connection to a federated, independent, solar-powerable mesh mobile network I've been designing, based on Intel N100 base stations on lampposts and stuff. it initially started as "what if I make an accessible meshtastic device?" and expanded out to "what if we made an accessible, non-touchscreen, E2EE, federated smartphone platform, based on a mid 2000s blackberry formfactor, a device very good at making very secure communication very simple and reliable, and very not optimised for anything else?"
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So, we could have a general-purpose personal computer that runs for 15 hours on a 2000 mAh battery. Maybe more with TTS output rather than a Braille display; I gather that Braille displays are fairly power-hungry because of all the pins moving up and down. But I believe that a general-purpose personal computer needs to be good for modifying its own software, at all levels of the stack. Rust fails hard on that criterion on this low-power CPU that has performance that used to be good.
10/?
So, do I want to go back to writing, and encouraging others to write, software in C? Absolutely not. I'm convinced by the arguments that memory safety by default, that can be checked by machine rather than requiring constant programmer discipline, is a moral imperative, considering the consequences of memory safety vulnerabilities for security and privacy.
11/?
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That Mantis is running a closed software stack on a SAMA5D3 SoC. It primarily acts as a Braille terminal for a PC or mainstream mobile device, and also has a handful of other applications, including a book reader that can download books over WiFi. But it could *be* a personal computer all by itself; it's already running Linux. Yes, it would be a personal computer with CPU performance somewhere in the neighborhood of a Pentium II. But we used to do real personal computing on those.
8/?
@matt my first Linux box was a 166MHz Cyrix 6x86 (so, much slower floating point than a Pentium or AMD at the same clock, but, pin compatible and similar instruction set, I think). It was a huge jump up from the Amiga 3000 I had before, and very usable for all sorts of things. I am pretty spoiled in terms of compute now, but I was writing software (well, learning to write software) on that machine. But, yeah, can't run a modern Linux or build Rust apps in 64MB. Maybe Zig, though?
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So, do I want to go back to writing, and encouraging others to write, software in C? Absolutely not. I'm convinced by the arguments that memory safety by default, that can be checked by machine rather than requiring constant programmer discipline, is a moral imperative, considering the consequences of memory safety vulnerabilities for security and privacy.
11/?
So do we have to accept that some level of computing power well above that of a Pentium II is simply the baseline for a modern general-purpose computer? Maybe. Perhaps the idea of something like the Mantis Braille display, with its battery efficiency, being a general-purpose personal computer is simply an impossible dream that I have to let go of. But, that was always an extreme example anyway.
12/?
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So, we could have a general-purpose personal computer that runs for 15 hours on a 2000 mAh battery. Maybe more with TTS output rather than a Braille display; I gather that Braille displays are fairly power-hungry because of all the pins moving up and down. But I believe that a general-purpose personal computer needs to be good for modifying its own software, at all levels of the stack. Rust fails hard on that criterion on this low-power CPU that has performance that used to be good.
10/?
@matt maybe gccrs (when it’s ready) will be less resource hungry. There is also Mutabah’s compiler you can try now.
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@matt my first Linux box was a 166MHz Cyrix 6x86 (so, much slower floating point than a Pentium or AMD at the same clock, but, pin compatible and similar instruction set, I think). It was a huge jump up from the Amiga 3000 I had before, and very usable for all sorts of things. I am pretty spoiled in terms of compute now, but I was writing software (well, learning to write software) on that machine. But, yeah, can't run a modern Linux or build Rust apps in 64MB. Maybe Zig, though?
@swelljoe My first Linux box was a 486SX at 33 MHz in 1996. I think I put Linux on it when it still had only 4 MB of RAM. Hard to believe you could actually compile real C code, including the kernel, on that little.
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So do we have to accept that some level of computing power well above that of a Pentium II is simply the baseline for a modern general-purpose computer? Maybe. Perhaps the idea of something like the Mantis Braille display, with its battery efficiency, being a general-purpose personal computer is simply an impossible dream that I have to let go of. But, that was always an extreme example anyway.
12/?
Were there other paths to a software stack with minimal unsafe code at the bottom that required far fewer machine resources to compile, that the industry chose not to take? Maybe the Rust Graydon wanted that had no future (https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/307291.html)? I guess it's kind of moot, because the industry didn't take one of those paths, meaning there's no big library ecosystem on which to build, say, a new personal computing platform with a TTS/Braille-first UI framework.
13/?
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@inkreas.ing How long does a release build take?
