ChariotSolutions
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2021–2024
55:08 · 367K views · May 9, 2019
Carol Nichols' Philly ETE 2019 talk on what makes Rust unique. It covers memory safety, how editions let the language evolve without breaking code, and who relies on Rust in production.
Cited as a talk about Rust's long-term outlook, and as the source of the rail-safety analogy for software safety.
3 comments from Hacker News
In my opinion, what has been most harmful for evolution of the software engineering profession is the tendency to blame individual developers for not being infallible instead of fixing chronic failures in tooling, processes, and funding. The medical profession, aviation, even rail transportation [1] have all progressed past the point where avoidable failures are entirely the responsibility of the individual. Of course, there was resistance in those fields as well because some considered themselves an "above-average" doctor or pilot who didn't need safeguards, checklists, union rules, or laws. But it empirically improved outcomes. [1] this video
I think Rust team would still have a very small stdlib even if they have more funding, here's a talk[0] where they aim to be relevant for the next 40 years, in that time span there would be a lot of changes and to be backward compatible, you cannot have features in your stdlib that will be irrelevant or change in the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years. [0] this video
FYI, Carol Nichols mentioned this in a Rust video [0] and I thought it was pretty interesting! (yes, previously submitted to HN, but long ago with little traction so I think this is within HN guidelines). [0] this video