His final conclusion is that C has to go, just like COBOL, Fortran, and PL/I. I wonder how long it will take before C will be gone totally when you realize how much COBOL and Fortran are still around. Not so long ago, I came along a module for Python 'SciPy.interpolate' that happens to be programmed in Fortran.

Is that even possible as long as the Linux kernel is written in C? I wonder if telling people not to learn C will have a long-term effect on being able to find competent contributors to the kernel.

nousermane

> Linux kernel is written in C

Not exclusively in C, not anymore: https://docs.kernel.org/rust/index.html

It might take another decade for a C-free build to be possible, though.

tmtvl

As long as there isn't a Rust compiler written in Rust (there is a transpiler to LLVM bytecode, but that gets compiled by a C++ compiler, same for GCC-rs) I don't think a C-free (or a C++-free) build will be possible at all, so I'm guessing it'll take somewhere in the 60-100 year range.

ansible

There are some open issues and features like inline assembly that aren't supported, but a moderately complete backend exists now:

https://github.com/bjorn3/rustc_codegen_cranelift

The compiler frontend is already written in Rust.