[Info-vax] VAX Macro to C conversion

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 7/19/2019 11:07 AM, Terry Kennedy wrote:
> On Thursday, July 18, 2019 at 9:45:35 PM UTC-4, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> Note that MS supposedly are considering towards Rust:
>> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/18/microsoft_argues_for_memorysafe_languages_hints_at_move_from_c_to_rust
> 
> That's fine for new in-house development, but as the article points
> out Microsoft uses a lot of Open Source and getting those developers
> to change is unlikely at best. I also suspect that Microsoft is not
> going to do wholesale rewrites of things in Rust. Certain
> frequently-exploited exposed surfaces* may get the rewrite, but I
> expect Microsoft will then sit back, wait and see to determine if
> that actually helped before committing resources to rewriting other
> components. Plus, any complete subsystems that are converted will
> need to undergo performance and regression testing (probably by
> customers in the field) so they should hopefully be sensitive to that
> as well.

MS has the same problem as VSI. The same problem as everyone except
startups.

It is expensive and risky to rewrite everything at once. So
they migrate chunks when that chunk for some other reason need
to be modified anyway. And it takes a very long time to get
through the entire system.

There is no guarantee that this Rust migration will actually
happen or that if it does happen will be successful.

(I think FireFox has become more unstable after they started
using Rust!)

But it is an indication that the concerns about C and C++ are
widely spread in the industry.

Arne