Why rust is better? for example, it has generics, which more abstract and offering greater reuse while still being efficient.
As for the dream of dropping fixed systems, you can already buy a cheap fast mcu from xmos with 4 cores which you can use 3 to create extra peripherals.Or another cheap CPU with a small fpga. But of course if you're fighting for pennies of cost or power, there might be better fixed alternatives than those 2.
BTW the reason we don't have FPGA on chips is probably mostly commercial - charging by the peripheral offer chip companies ways to more revenues and more differentiation between each other. They really don't want to sell the same commodity chips of mcu+fpga.
Sorry, I shouldn't have thrown in the quip on FPGAs. It really is a complete non-sequitor. I think a very neat topic, but didn't belong here.
I don't accept that generics are somehow an automatic win for languages. I do like them somewhat, myself, but I don't think there has been compelling evidence that they can be used to great effect in building embedded systems.
Consider, at the low level, the majority of the code written is still in C. Not C++, C. And I can't bring myself to agree that it is lacking because of it.
I know he is intentionally inflammatory, but I think Torvald's rant on why he rejected C++ for Git is somewhat poignant. As is all of the attempts at writing the git core in higher level languages. Specifically, how they haven't really succeeded.
I will confess to being open to the argument, but outside of revisionist history and wishful thinking, I just don't see proof that things are automatically better with today's practices over those of yesterday's.
If you look at surveys ,c++ ,as shitty as it may be, is used a lot around the industry.And the fact that ARM have chosen it for the mbed on which they plan to build an operating system around for IOT chips, shows it's value for mcu's, at least in some segments.
The other data point regarding rust is the huge excitement in the embedded community.
I shouldn't be surprised that c++ is as popular as it is. For some reason, I was fixated on the kernel for the data point I was thinking of.
And do not mistake what I'm saying as that I think rust isn't as good as c. Even better, in many ways. My question is specifically if people today will be able to accomplish better things because of the language. I'm doubtful.
Most of the biggest accomplishments in embedded space comes down to the massive gains in the silicon. Most of which is dominated by advances in boolean chain evaluation to make faster circuits. Wider, sure, but also faster. (At least, that is my understanding... I'll admit I am no authority on this.)
This does excite me. Though, there are at least two obvious problems. First, I want it to be a bit more objective. "Suffered from inadequacies of C" and "from what I can tell" both need more concrete examples/numbers for it to be make sense.
Second, I don't think anyone would argue that the biggest thing spurring movement in GCC is the success of clang.
As for the dream of dropping fixed systems, you can already buy a cheap fast mcu from xmos with 4 cores which you can use 3 to create extra peripherals.Or another cheap CPU with a small fpga. But of course if you're fighting for pennies of cost or power, there might be better fixed alternatives than those 2.
BTW the reason we don't have FPGA on chips is probably mostly commercial - charging by the peripheral offer chip companies ways to more revenues and more differentiation between each other. They really don't want to sell the same commodity chips of mcu+fpga.