Re: Planned obsolescence ? (*BSD, Rust)

[David Starner <prosfilaes@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Nov 3, 2025 at 12:35 AM Jan-Daniel Kaplanski
<jd.kaplanski@aol.de> wrote:
> That said, 20 year old hardware that is still in-use today by a reasonably large amount of users isn't something I'd consider ancient or retro.

Yes, 20 year old hardware is looking ancient and retro. There seem to
be four architectures at issue: Alpha, HPPA, m68k and SH4. There is no
practical reason to use Linux on any of those instead of a Raspberry
Pi; a Pi 5 soundly beats any of those systems ever made. SH4
(Dreamcast) and m68k are reasonably available, but Alpha and HPPA
always had limited availability.

> It feels like the movement to introduce Rust everywhere is more because Rust has become such a buzzword that everyone must use it now and less because of the capabilities of Rust. Not to throw shade, but if the only benefit is memory safety you might as well do a rewrite in any other memory safe language that provides I/O access (e.g. Haskell) instead.

The developer has decided to do a rewrite in Rust instead of some
other memory safe language. There are certain advantages to going with
the language more people know and use. Part of it is that systems that
don't support Rust are going to be less and less capable of using
modern software. (For a counter example, look at CVSup, written in
Modula-3. An essential tool in FreeBSD, it was rewritten in C, because
while Modula-3 is a nice language, it's also a dead one.)

--
The standard is written in English . If you have trouble understanding
a particular section, read it again and again and again . . . Sit up
straight. Eat your vegetables. Do not mumble. -- _Pascal_, ISO 7185
(1991)