Posts tagged with "rust"

August 26, 2022 » Tagged: writeup, programming, arm, rust, pinephone, alpine, postmarketos, emacs

I Love My PinePhone

For the past ten months, I've been using my PinePhone as a "daily driver." By which, I mean it's been in my pocket everywhere I go, and it's the device I use to make phone calls. Depending on your familiarity with the PinePhone (or the state of "Linux Phones" more generally) this statement is either delirious, or vapid (why should I care that you use a "smart" phone just like the rest of us?) Don't be mistaken: the PinePhone is usable as a little cellular-capable PDA, and it's in a league of its own. This article is my attempt to document my experiences and rationale for wanting to use one, as well as my thoughts on mobile Linux in general.

July 05, 2022 » Tagged: writeup, rust, embedded, hardware, flipperzero

Rust on the Flipper Zero

My Flipper Zero arrived in the mail a few weeks ago, ending a nearly two-year wait for its arrival. For the uninitiated, it's a "multi-tool device for geeks": a development board for radio, IR, and GPIO in a Tamagotchi-like form-factor. It combines the capability of the GoodWatch with the cuteness of the Pwnagotchi. Part of the appeal, to me, is the ability to hack on the free (as in freedom) firmware. As capable as it was out of the box, providing plenty of amusement when my brother and I took it for a spin through some parking garages, there are still features I'd like to add to it. The problem is that I've been too pampered by Rust as of late to want to do my firmware hacks in C.

June 08, 2018 » Tagged: opinion, programming, rust

First Impressions of the Rust Programming Language

C is almost 50 years old, and C++ is almost 40 years old. While age is usually indicative of mature implementations with decades of optimization under their belts, it also means that the language's feature set is mostly devoid of modern advancements in programming language design. For that reason, you see a great deal of encouragement nowadays to move to newer languages - they're designed with contemporary platforms in mind, rather than working within the limitations of platforms like the PDP-11. Among said "new languages" are Zig, Myrddin, Go, Nim, D, Rust… even languages like Java and Elixir that run on a virtual machine are occasionally suggested as alternatives to the AOT-compiled C and C++.