A programming language that offers no mechanism to handle memory allocation errors is not a system programming language. I have yet to come to a conclusion on the merits of Rust, but this claim about system programming always ticks me off.
First, I feel that is a bit of gate keeping. I've done a lot of systems work where Rust today would have been perfectly fine. We originally tried to track memory allocation errors but we gave up because we didn't test allocation failures and likely had large gaps in it and just found it wasn't worth the code bloat. We still checked for allocation failures for data transfer buffers but thats it.
Second, Rust doesn't stop you from handling memory allocation errors. The standard library might fully support failable allocations but that doesn't stop you from using your own collections for that type of work.
Third, this has been an item of interest for a long time in the Rust community and is actively being worked on as part of introducing Rust into Linux.
It does not take much sophistication to end up with multiple allocation arenas, any one of which might be exhausted without indicating general system failure.
Being ill-equipped to use or recover from allocation failures in such arenas bodes poorly for a systems language.
If you’re allocating from multiple arenas, you’re not going to be using `new` in C++ or `Box` in Rust. Nothing stops you from writing an arena allocator that can return an error code in Rust any more than C++ does.
If you run nightly you can already Box::new_in(thing, my_allocator) if that is what you want. Or indeed, if you want to keep Nathan here happy, you can even Box::try_new_in(thing, my_allocator) and get Errors when your allocator says it can't help you (which you likely won't ever bother handling meaningfully).
In the event you're as desperate for those last dregs of performance as the author of the "Why not rust?" article, (and let's assume you actually measured your performance problem before jumping to the step where you make everything more complicated and more buggy for no good reason?) you can even Box::try_new_uninit_in() and unsafely do all the initialization in place as needed yourself as you might do by default in C++.
Now, I don't know when Allocators will be stabilized, the Working Group has been making steady progress for some years now but this is a tricky business, witness the many languages that get it quite badly wrong...
> We originally tried to track memory allocation errors but we gave up
I hope it wasn't a safety-critical application.
> Rust [...] doesn't stop you from using your own collections for that type or work
and your own replacements for all of their dependances. Remind me why
I need Rust again.
> this [...] is actively being worked on
I'm looking forward to learning Rust when it becomes worthwhile. For
now it seems that asking about allocation errors in Rust on HN is like
asking about nuclear waste disposal for next generation reactors.
Answer: never mind about that; look at all the cool safety features.
That's not a limitation of the language, that's a limitation of the current standard library. This is being revised to match expectations of the Linux kernel development, which by no means encompasses every aspect of "systems" programming.
The most disconcerting part for me is the fact that the attackers gained full access to one of the administrators’ LastPass account. I would love to know how that happened.
Multiple Futurama episodes got tears out of me. I think it's a normal and natural thing to be touched by a piece of media to the point of tears. I've watched them again in fact.
"Luck of the Fryish" has always been a favorite of mine. Not quite as tear-jerking as Jurassic Bark, but still a little sad with a somewhat somber ending.
People frequently show more affection in movies to animals than to humans. The Walking Dead spent years graphically and brutally killing humans both dead and undead and no one flinched. Then one episode the starving protagonists killed a pack of feral dogs for food and suddenly there were tears shed.
Yep! It's the one where Fry remembers the seven-leaf-clover. I thought the scene with Yancy naming his son Phillip since his brother went missing was one of the best scenes in the series.
I think there is a straightforward solution to the housing crisis, and it’s not building more houses and squeezing more and more people into the same limited space. At least for Big Tech, which seems to be the focus of the problem, the solution would be telecommuting. As a software engineer, there is no reason whatsoever for me to go to an office. I can do whatever I do from anywhere in the world as long as I have a decent internet connection. Yet I’m forced to live in an expensive place just because of some old pre-hitech mentality that expects me to be in an office.
> At least for Big Tech, which seems to be the focus of the problem, the solution would be telecommuting.
I like to call this the "thoughts and prayers" solution - we offer thoughts and prayers that big tech will suddenly de-prioritize having butts in their HQ and that demand will greatly drop as a result.
I recently moved from the Bay Area to Seattle. I was looking forward to the move because I love cycling and Seattle was rated #1 in bike infrastructure last year [1]. While the infrastructure is indeed somewhat better than the BA, I was shocked by the widespread hate for cyclists everywhere in Seattle and surrounding areas. Getting honked at is a regular occurrence here, and people will actually stick their head out of their cars to make sure you hear the insults they are shouting at you, while simultaneously giving you the finger. It gets worse: a couple weeks ago somebody hiding behind some trees threw a rock at me while riding on the Burke Gilman trail. Fortunately they missed me. The rock (fist-sized) shattered a few feet in front of me on the trail pavement. The hate is incessant and I definitely understand why people don’t feel comfortable riding.
FWIW I've lived in Seattle for the past 13 years and I typically commute by bicycle a few times per week in the spring/summer from North Seattle into downtown. I've never had anything like that happen to me.
I have however dealt with a lot of oblivious drivers nearly running me off the road.
The new dedicated bike lanes with the reflective pylons are helping (especially the two-way barrier-protected bike lane on 2nd Ave of downtown), but there's still a lot more to improve.
Regarding the cases where people in cars are yelling at you, are you riding slower than traffic in the car lane when this happens? Doing so defensively away from curb to avoid being door'ed but at the same time blocking cars from passing you?
Not agreeing with drivers, just guessing as this does attract a lot of driver rage.
I think there are two schools of thought here: cyclists who say "we have every right to this road, the same as any car." And the upset drivers, who say "If you were in a car going this slow, I'd still be pissed off."
Me? I have a bike and a car in Seattle, but almost always walk or take public transit. It's low stress that way, which I like. At intersections, cars and cyclists both hassle pedestrians in their own way. The cars, because they are too accommodating and make you feel almost obliged to run across the street when they stop for you even though they could have easily kept going without coming close to you. And the cyclists, because a horrible minority of them are totally blind to pedestrians in a way that drivers in Seattle aren't. Most cyclists are fine, but you've got to stay on your toes for the few that aren't.
Also fwiw, I rode daily all over Seattle for several years and had this happen to me exactly zero times. I've never met someone who, unprovoked, would yell at or menace a cyclist and have a hard time imagining someone who would except a rare crazy or 16yr old idiot trying to impress his friends. I have however talked to many people who are driven nuts by cyclists who obstruct traffic (in their opinion)
FWI(still)W, from talking to cyclists in my area (NYC and surroundings) whether somebody gets yelled at depends on a lot more than how they're riding. As an example, the women I know who ride bicycles (just as competently) get menaced a lot more than the men.
Usually this happens on weekends when I go on long rides. Smaller roads without a bike lane are worse than bigger multi-lane ones. Places outside Seattle proper are the major offenders: Bellevue, Issaquah, Renton, Enumclaw, to name a few. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m wearing a cycling kit that ticks people off.
My commute to work is usually uneventful, about 10 miles mostly on dedicated bike paths along with many other commuters. It’s a few miles longer than it should but it’s definitely the safest route to work.
Shoulders are full of glass and other debris that makes them an intense hazard to ride in. That's why they're the shoulder, not a lane.
In plenty of the areas mentioned (Issaquah, Renton, etc.) there isn't much of a shoulder to speak of. When I take a longer loop around Lake Washington+Sammamish, here's one of the roads I go down:
Looks like enough room to scootch over into if you have cars behind you (just like drivers do for each other). Not saying you don't do that but going back to ggp post, I think it is obstructing traffic that causes the rage. Being flexible can go a long way. If you do make such an effort on your rides, what is your experience with getting yelled at?
Huh? There's perhaps a foot of pavement there. I'm wider than that. My bike is wider than that. There's no room for safely passing in the lane - drivers can go into the oncoming lane to pass just like they would for any other vehicle.
I see people do that riding slowly uphill in two lane 35mph+ streets, and it's just very obnoxious when there's a line of cars behind them and no attempt is made to let them pass. People get very enraged..
I don't commute by bike but I ride on the Burke Gilman trail fairly regularly and have never experienced any animosity whatsoever. It sounds like you had a freak encounter with a run of the mill wackjob. The city is full of them and the police are essentially worthless... My guess is that encounter probably had more to do with his mental problems than the fact that you were on a bike.
Seconding sibling comment that aggressive pedestrians or drivers has never been an issue for me biking in Seattle. The biggest reasons for me biking less than I could are weather (traction is an issue on hills) and not wanting to leave my bike around outside.
Yeah theft is definitely an issue -- particularly at the light rail stations. I had my bike stolen in broad daylight underneath a security camera even while secured with a sizable cable lock. The responding SPD officer told me you need a beefy U-lock or it's going to get stolen eventually.
I don't experience this hate at all. I'd consider myself more multi-modal than anything, and I do have a car. I do, however, use Lime bikes pretty often, and when I'm on one, I don't get any hate at all. I've never heard of anyone I know being jeered at, much less being pelted with rocks. I don't think the experience you describe is typical.
I’ve noticed that in Denver that the more the bike infrastructure improves, the more people hate cyclists. Partly because cyclists often refuse to actually use the infrastructure instead riding on busy car laden streets one block over.
Also because the bike infrastructure came at the cost of parking or lanes of traffic.
I bike around the city every day and it’s definitely becoming more contentious.
That's interesting. There must be a reason cyclists prefer the busy street over the said one. People are not that irrational.
I have seen cases of "improved" cycling infrastructure, for instance, like adding an impractical bike lane someplace, where the real intent is to mop the cyclists out of the way of the motorists.
I have bike commuted all over the US and almost all municipalities get this wrong. When building cycling infrastructure, optimize for the convenience of cyclists and not of motorists and people will use it.
About as much sense as it makes to use ; after every Python statement. Just like Pascal.
(Yeah I know, ; is a statement separator, not a statement terminator in Pascal.)
As long as you're being just like Pascal, did you know Python supported Pascal-like "BEGIN" and "END" statements? You just have to prefix them with the "#" character (and indent the code inside them correctly, of course). ;)
It's not valid in an assignment statement, so you can't use it everywhere.
FWIW, I agree with the sentiment; I use := for assignment in my language precisely because that's the correct symbol. But even there, my grammar accepts = as assignment as well because I type it from habit.
> At a certain point doesn’t creating a preference for pedestrians and cyclists actually end up being a preference for wealthier people who can afford to live downtown, versus those who need to access the city but can’t live within walking or biking distance?
Reducing the number of cars (and therefore traffic) on the roads will benefit everybody, especially if cars and bikes don't get in each other's way (such as in the case of dedicated and protected bike lanes).
> Note that bicyclists and skateboarders also slow down busses, which are what lower income people use to get around
I don't think this is true. Busy streets and traffic jams slow down buses.
Reducing the number of cars (and therefore traffic) on the
roads will benefit everybody
You seem to have a rose-tinted view of the world we live in.
Have you ever had to commute in less-than-ideal
conditions?
Heavy snow? Sleet? Black ice?
Have you ever lived in places that are not
perfectly flat? or lived in places that
are hot that make bicycling unfeasible?
Did you have sporting gear / work gear that
you had to lug? Did you know some people have
to fetch their own gear to work
Did you have to take calls during transit?
Did you know its common practice for employees
to call into meetings during their commute and/or
help assist operations via conference calls?
Have you had to shop for more than a baguette
or a bagel at a store? You know how cumbersome
that gets for even a family of three?
Do you have the slightest clue how much casual
violence and crime happen on public transit?[1]
Not to belabor the point but there simply are dozens of cases where bicycles or public transit just don't cut it. Not to mention the hygiene, personal safety (from other passengers for example) and personal space aspects involved in someone choosing a mode of transportation other than public transit or bicycling.
Ride-sharing, autonomous vehicles and emission-free vehicles should all alleviate the issues we currently face with traffic, parking and accidents.
However doing away with cars or vehicular traffic is just pollyannaish madness.
[1]
Teen robbed at gunpoint at Fruitvale, BART officer says writing a report is a 'waste of resources'
Tech companies complain there aren't enough high-skilled workers. Small businesses lament there are too few low-skilled workers. In the end, they are both saying the same thing: they want more workers for less money.
Yes. I have an account there. Saw either in their newsletter or on their site recently, that they say some X0 million people (researchers) are using it.
