by aw1621107 | 2025-12-26 07:41:46+00:00
> TypeScript is JavaScript with a moderate improvement to one of its many flaws.

I'm certainly not going to say that nothing better could emerge, but nevertheless it's effort towards improving something that isn't memory safety.

In other words, I don't really agree that there's a "singular focus" on memory safety. Memory safety rewrites/projects get headlines, absolutely, but that doesn't mean everyone else has dropped what they were doing. Generally speaking, different groups, different projects, etc.

> It's kind of the opposite of that.

I don't think I quite agree? What I was thinking is that there have been efforts to make memory-safe dialects/variants/etc. of C/C++, but none of them really got significant traction in the domains Rust is now finding so much success in. I'm not saying this is because Rust is easy, but (at least partially) because it took concepts from those previous efforts and made them easy enough to be accessible to ordinary devs, and as a result Rust could become a plausible more-secure replacement for C/C++ where those earlier efforts could not.

> The problem with WordPress isn't that it's designed for performance over security. It's not fast, and a replacement with a better design could easily improve performance while doing significantly more validation. And it's full of low-hanging fruit in terms of just removing a lot of the legacy footguns.

Sure, and I'm not denying that. My point is just that unlike Rust vs. C/C++, as of this moment we don't know what an analogous plausible replacement for WordPress could be (or at least I don't know; perhaps you're more in-the-know than I am). Again, it's the difference between having a plausible solution for a problem in hand vs. sitting at the drafting desk with some sketches.

> In general when you come up with some new construction methods that are better able to withstand earthquakes, you apply them whenever you build a new building, and maybe to some specific buildings that are especially important or susceptible to the problem, but it's not worth it to raze every building in the city just to build them again with the new thing.

I feel like perhaps where the analogy breaks down is that unlike rebuilding a building, the Rust version of something can be built while the old version is still being used. Rust 4 Linux didn't require Linux and/or driver development to halt or for existing drivers to be removed in order to start and/or continue its development, Dropbox didn't have to tear out its old sync engine before starting work on the new one, etc.

And because of that, I feel like in general Rust is already mostly being used for new/important things? Or at the very least, I don't think "raze every building in the city just to build them again with the new thing" is an apt description of what is going on; it's more akin to building a "shadow" copy of a building in the same space using the new techniques with the possibility of swapping the "shadow" copy in at some point.

Or maybe I'm just too charitable here. Wouldn't be the first time.

> After all, what happens when you get the new new thing? Start all over again, again?

If the cost-benefit analysis points in that direction, sure, why not?